Saturday, October 24, 2009

The road to SOAR VI

As it has rained every second day of this roadtrip, I was not surprised to see the parking lot full of puddles on Friday morning. Even deserts need some water.


This section of road was so familiar to me. Even after 40 years I recognised some of the grades, the turns, the landscape. One of the strangest things about this trip is the speed with which the landscape became? reverted to? familiarity. After 30 years in the UK this is still, always home. It calls to us. And yet I see Scotland in the curve of a hillside, a patch of bronze grassland. I am torn.




After a brief stop in Princeton (the hardware store to buy *real* string for drivebands), Hwy 3 heads up inton the North Cascades. Which lived up to their name. The sun shone weakly through the clouds as we stopped to eat our remaining food (banana, breakfast bars, and cookies) and walk a few hundred mteres down the Dewdney Trail under the dripping trees.


Then we were off again, travelling down the valley toward the Fraser Valley and the Pacific.


The valley widened, birch and then poplar replaced tamarack, gold on the hillsides. And then the sign announced Hope. Across the Fraser


and onto the old road. Skirting the rocks at the edge of the valley


moving down to the flat valley floor. Empty (only two engines for an immense length) grain trains waited for the journey east.


-- posted on the move

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