Tales from the north
The winding down of summer
Discovery of such a beautiful lake so close to the city would probably come a lot sooner than 2 years into living in a new place for most people. But most people is really not me, or Doris, but she does eventually, successfully, carry me in my shell closer to the city and new places, and that’s probably a little bit good for both of us.
We spent some beautiful days at Chadburn Lake toward the end of July, finally bringing our water toys into these glacial waters.
Following that, we ran out for a quick day trip to Kluane checking in on how much mountain, national park beauty it takes to make peace with disgusting 30°C temperatures, and then finally the first aurora chases of the season were successful in early August with more on the way.
The meandering drive back north
“Sometimes the absence of options leads to the best one of all.”
After our horizontal migration from Calgary to Kamloops, I think it was the evening before we were leaving to start our more leisurely drive back home and Stewart, BC wasn’t even really on our radar.
We were getting a little desperate at this point and had resorted to massive physical maps, like the ones from CAA. Where we wanted to end up around at the end of our first day driving back just felt like a dead zone. Smithers was too close and just about anything further north than that may as well have been an entirely additional day of driving. Hotels were sparse and our ability to make a decision was even more rare.
Then we circled back to Stewart on the map, and sure it was a little bit out of the way, but after reading rumours of glacier views from the highway and bears basically outnumbering humans, we found a charming hotel with crooked, creaky floors and amazing views and booked it.
That was probably my favourite decision from the entire trip.
On the highway in, the winds were wildly strong but the air so warm and sweet. We travelled right through golden hour, and you can only imagine how breathtaking that light was cast over the mountain peaks towering up from either side of the highway. We did see bears, as promised, and as much as I wanted to spend the rest of the little remaining daylight sitting in front of glaciers, we resigned ourselves to tea and treats in our cosy little room at the Bayview Hotel.
Our final couple days on the road were spent soaking in and soaking up Northern BC. Every time we passed the Liard Hot Springs, we spent some hours there, again dreaming of returning in the middle of winter. We found cosy accommodation in Muncho Lake Provincial Park, and wandered around the mountains and the most teal lakes I’ve ever seen. By the time we parked back home, we had done 6,141.4 kilometres in a week and a half and were ready to do it again in a heartbeat.
The annual road trip south
24 hour drives through the bright nights of northern summers have, over the last 8 years, become one of my favourite things in the world. Hotels never felt necessary because I could sleep just when I felt tired, which was rarely ever. I loved all the light, open space, and total freedom way too much.
This year was the same, but different. There was so much to see, so many places to stop. So many mountains, so many lakes, and so much wildlife. So we included an overnight in Fort St. John on the way down.
Our departure was not set in stone, but at 3:30 in the morning, all that remained was wrapping up a couple stollen along with other baking from the night before, re-warming our non-alcoholic Glühwein, and taking our blue IKEA bag full of snacks and goodies out to the car.
The sky was already bright, and although we weren’t driving all the way through in one day, we were still staring down a 1,300 kilometre day one, which we expectantly turned into an 18 hour day with truly dozens of wildlife sightings and goodness knows how many other photo and coffee stops. Some stops we planned, like Rancheria Falls and the Liard Hot Springs, but far more were spontaneous requiring u-turns more often than not. If we weren’t careful, we would have spent more hours in the shoulders off the side of the Alaska Highway watching bears, caribou, dozens or hundreds of bison, mountain goats and moose than we would have actually driving.
“Oh my god, oh my god, I’ll call you back! Baby bears!”
Nearing the end of day one, about halfway between Fort Nelson and Fort St. John, we were on the phone to my mum when I stopped her mid sentence with a dramatic “Oh my god, oh my god, I’ll call you back! Baby bears!”
It was what we had wished to see since we left this morning, and at the side of the highway, a mama bear and her three cubs. We pulled way off into the shoulder and just watched, photographed, and took video. It was the best.
Asking the real questions — IKEA or the Icefields Parkway
At breakfast in our hotel at the beginning of day two, we still had not decided on our route to Calgary. A far more direct route via Edmonton that would include a convenient lunch stop/shop with better stock availability than Calgary, or a several hour detour through a mostly smoky Icefields Parkway. We were never going to have all the time we wanted for the Icefields Parkway this time, plus we hate summer, so we knew we’d be back eventually anyway. But in the end, we decided on the Icefields Parkway and it was more beautiful than I had remembered, and a quick Click & Collect order from IKEA Calgary to secure the lowest stock items made this the right decision for sure.
Sunset in Calgary at last
The Long Road
Decorating blind, again
Now sitting in Scotiabank’s my little apartment, I have owned exactly 2 homes in my 35 years. Both of them I bought sight unseen, from several thousand kilometres away. So wandering the showrooms and marketplace at IKEA, and burning my fingertips on my phone screen from spending so much time in their app, to furnish a place I hadn’t actually seen, wasn’t new or particularly surprising. It was in a way my bliss, and I loved every second of it.
Finding space for all of that love and bliss in a little Ford Escape wasn’t the most straight forward task. I knew in a worst case scenario, I could just ship up a few boxes and that wouldn’t be the end of the world. But I didn’t need to save any space for anything, it didn’t matter how ridiculous the inside of my car looked. There aren’t any prizes for unused space, so I may as well just try to take it all. I unpacked individual IKEA items to save on space and weight. I stuffed clothes into lampshades. I padded the back window with pillows to keep a floor mirror and ceiling track light from going through it on acceleration and bumps. Plants were boxed up in bunches and stacked. It was the culmination of nearly a decade of playing tetris with suitcases at YVR.
A few highways bumps made me bite my lip hard and turn my head back at my porcelain bathroom sink, as if I could see it, wondering if I had just rendered it useless. But thankfully not. Not that I was ever driving very fast anyway. I had litres per hundred records to set.
"There aren't any prizes for unused space, so I may as well just try to take it all."
Beauty anxiety and cosy nights
Long drives soothe me. They aren’t a chore, they’ve never felt like a thorn in my side or something I just needed to get over with. They’re one of the best parts of life, and in my dream car, going up through one of the most beautiful places in the world, it was something I was more than ready to enjoy every second of. I just wish there were more McDonald’s for their baked apple pies and black coffee.
So more than 9 weeks behind schedule, it was finally departure day for the Yukon after a multiple-time extended summer in BC. Hotels were booked, cancelled, and re-booked. It was a running joke in my mum’s house that every conversation we had about how my apartment is coming along in Whitehorse, the year of completion got exponentially more ridiculous.
"Don't you go falling in love with my ZZ plant now, because I'm taking it with me when I leave here in 2054."
But now I was staring down another 2,200 kilometres, a distance I’d been used to doing straight through. I would this time spread it out over 3 days. 8 hour drives easily became 14 hour days between coffee breaks, emergency photo stops, drone launches, and deep breaths in the sweet forest air.
The weather changed often and dramatically. Golden hour light took my breath away, touching the very tops of trees or peaks of mountains. Blue hour felt never ending and never more beautiful. It was the best of summer, every moment of it. The beauty was almost too much for my chest.
Pain from the north
The wind here is unrelenting. It’s magical on those 30° summer nights, but that seems a world away still. For now, it remains painful on my hands and ears. A reminder of the north.
Walks through a hilly neighbourhood and up into the mountains gives a little peace to my mind, and the opportunity for endless nose sniffling out loud. I stop at a backyard to give the most beautiful cat some love through it’s fence. And then cross the steps into the nature trails, passing the sign that warns of rattlesnakes. I hate snakes.
The skies here never stay the same. Sunset and twilight over the mountains feels so magical. It’s an intense feeling. The sunset kept changing to become more and more beautiful. For only minutes, low fast moving clouds would light up in pink sunlight against varying depths of blues, and then so quickly those clouds lost their pink. It was magic.
I was taking the same photo over and over again, convinced each one was the most beautiful. These are good evenings, but I can’t wait until it’s truly warm and my ears don’t hurt in the wind.
