BC Safari

You know by now that we love taking road trips in BC with its endless change in terrain and virtually empty spaces. Let me add a caveat to the “we love taking road trips in BC” statement: I hate ferries and getting from Tsawwassen to anywhere means crossing the lower mainland’s sorry excuse for a highway system. So I start out crabby because it takes 6 hours, give or take, to travel about 200 kms, which you have to agree is ridiculous and highly annoying. And we end our trips with the same irritation – just had to get that off my mind so you know it isn’t all perfect.

We were supposed to go to Las Vegas, back in March; you may remember that change of plan… We ended up with two one week time-share credits to use and since we aren’t loving airports just now looked for a something within driving range, (this barely qualifies as we are almost 1000 kms east of Vancouver. It is a BIG province) and here we are. Here is the East Kootenays at Fairmont Hot Springs, pretty close to the Alberta border between the Purcell and Rocky mountain ranges. We aren’t even in the Pacific Time zone which caused a bit of consternation as our GPS had us arriving much later than what appeared reasonable. It (she) was giving our eta in local time, not our time, which we eventually figured out. And on the topic, apparently whoever entered the coordinates for the Fairmont resort slipped a cog and if you aren’t a bit sceptical of your GPS you might end up 25kms down the wrong road. We are sceptical so were fine but I bet a lot of people arrive highly ticked off!

our view at dusk about 9:30pm

The weather so far is perfect, we always have good weather or have very rosy glasses – not sure which. We are pretty positive about whatever is thrown at us so maybe we just don’t notice if it rains. I do remember Barb (cousin) and Jim rebelling against my plan-for-the-day in Yorkshire a couple of years ago, just as some dreadful flooding rains were getting underway.

I’m finally getting to the safari part…

Yesterday we went on a guided hike to the top of the local hoodoos, very different from the Drumheller hoodoos, and then explored Invermere in the afternoon which is a charming small town.

Today we took ourselves off the Lussier hot springs about 45 minutes south of here. It’s a natural riverside spring and mighty darned hot!

On the way back down the narrow, twisty, gravel road, (did I say we drive a Subaru so don’t worry about rugged roads?) we saw 3, count ‘em 3, cougars (also known as puma, mountain lion or panther). I don’ t know anyone else who has actually seen a cougar in the wild, maybe you all have, and we saw three, presumably a mother and 2 young adult offspring. Two raced across the road, right in front of us: one had lost most of its tail but didn’t seem to be having a balance problem as it flew by. I saw the third which we had cut off from the others and somehow Jim got his camera out and managed to catch a photo as it tore after its companions or you might justifiably think I was making this story up. What a moment - possibly even more exciting than the fabulous animals in Africa last year because it was so unexpected.

Not an anticlimax by any means, but without the thrill factor, we stopped at the head of the Columbia River which certainly doesn’t live up to “Mighty Columbia” here but it was an interesting walk. It pretty much bubbles up from somewhere into a wetland area and then trundles off to the Pacific, gathering speed and volume as it goes and providing hydro-electricity to millions of people.

And that’s today’s report!