Moving along

Let's see, after Penticton we drove to Castlegar, where my parents live. My mom just had her 90th birthday this summer!

I had heard that she had a pair of socks that needed mending. I'd made these socks in 2006 (when the kids were so much smaller!) and I knew I didn't have any of the original yarn left, so I took with me a small bit of some similar colour.


Well. I'm going to need more than a small bit for this! They don't so much need darning, as reknitting! The toes have already been darned several times, and the holes just became too much to deal with!

I did just give my mom a new pair of socks for her birthday, but I hope that before Christmas I will rip these back to the "good" part and reknit the toes ... in completely different yarn! Make do and mend.

I did leave a knitted object with my parents. I had made a birthday dishcloth for my nephew, but he is one of the few relatives we didn't manage to hook up with on this jaunt. I was at my parents' place and noticed that the rag they were using was kinda tatty looking. I know I have given them dishrags recently, but didn't know where to look for them, and so just gave them Geoff's cloth! He's gone without birthday gifts from me for probably his whole life, so I'm sure he'll forgive me!

After a few days of hanging around, throwing rocks in the river and chit chatting, we left and continued eastward. First stop was lunchtime in Kaslo.

We then took the road that goes up beside the Arrow Lakes. The road changes sides of the water at one point, and everyone takes the little ferry across and continues on their way.

I believe it was on our way to this ferry that we had an adventure that went unphotographed! How the heck am I supposed to keep things straight?

Anyways, we were driving along, and came to a place where the traffic was stopped and guys in lumo vests and hard hats were standing around. It appeared that they were supposed to be installing a pipe in a ditch, but the digger had backed up into a power pole, causing sparks and "confusion and delay," as the Fat Controller would say. (That site is not as family-friendly as one might expect, sorry!)

So rather than sit in a line of cars waiting for the Hydro truck to come and sort things out, we turned around to a picnic spot we had just passed, at Summit Lake. In the parking lot we noticed a wee little toad. And when we got to the lakeshore, we realised the place was crawling (hopping!) with Western toads! They hopped out of our way as we walked along the beach. Very cool, and impossible to photograph -- grey toads on sand, and moving targets, at that!

We meant to go all the way to Banff in one day, but it would have meant a very long chunk of driving, so we split the journey and spent a night in Revelstoke. It was the first time on the trip that we just sauntered across the Trans-Canada Highway to find dinner. Funny, in Toronto a highway is huge, but in much of Canada, the highway is just the road through town.

Now, lemme tell you about vehicles. Here in Toronto, the guys who want to impress with their manliness (and money) drive Range Rovers and Hummers and other SUV-like things. The real man in small-town BC drives an F-150 pickup -- maybe a Ram, but always a truck. Motorcycles are Harleys, ridden by the same guys who were riding them 40 years ago -- just that now they're 40 years older than when they started! I didn't manage to get a photo of any of them, but I can tell you that apparently leather chaps are the thing to wear on your motorbike these days.

But this is the kind of get-up that catches my eye. Beautiful dishwasher-green VW bus with Quebec plates, and the cool bike on a trailer at the back. The guy was wearing a hand-knitted cap, of course.

Oh, look, a butterfly.

Okay, so we get up next morning and really start up the mountains.

A robot photo, with the camera sitting in the grass! This is at Field, which is on the highway just west of Banff National Park, with the illustrious Mount Stephen in the background. Guess why this is a family favourite! If I dug around here, I could show you pictures of Stephen in front of that mountain through the ages, starting in about 1965. After we took this he looked around a bit and decided that "usually" he stood in a slightly different spot!

Phew, we made it up Rogers Pass,

and time to stop for now! Next, really, Banff!