Sunday, August 30, 2009

Canada Trip Pictures: Driving Around Western Canada

So I went to Canada and stuff, but never posted the pictures I'd promised.

Now, a good bunch of them are on my primary computer, which is currently suffering an IP address error which I must wait until monday to resolve, but I uploaded all these a while ago, so you can see them.

And what else did you do this weekend, Roboseyo?

I was sick, so I mostly just stayed home and bummed around. Watched some sweet Alfred Hitchcock Movies: Cracked Rear Window, The Birds, and Psycho were all pretty awesome. Hostel was terrible. If I'm going to see so many movies, I might get my hands on the AFI top 100 or somesuch. Or watch more Korean movies, seeing as I owe alls'y'all a rundown of Korean movies well worth your time to see.

But here are some pictures of my trip to Canada.

Vancouver, downtown.
The night sky on the way home from white rock.
Many of the side streets in vancouver were vitually car free; maybe I missed something, but it seemed like they were reserved, either legally or tacitly, for bicyclers.
Near Grand Forks, British Columbia. The Rocky Mountains were in especially fine form this trip, and a good thing, as I drove across them twice, stretched over three days: one day from Langley to Red Deer, my sister's hometown to my brother's, eight from Red Deer to Creston, where my other sister lives, and eight more from Creston back to Langley again: a triangle punctuated by stops to stretch my legs, drive throughs, an epic seven hour stretch without finding a single Tim Hortons, lots of coffee, fewer pee breaks than usual, because of careful liquid intake (I'm a bit of a road-trip badass, after so many times needing to skooch all over the place so often).


I tried taking pictures of some nice stuff without stopping the car, by pointing the camera out the window, but it didn't really work out as often as I'd hoped it would.


I stopped at this bridge right before the sun went down: it was right in my windshield, making it dangerous to negotiate corners and stuff, so I just got out of the car and took pictures until the sun was low enough not to bother me anymore. This shaft of sunlight caught tons of bugs... few enough of them mosquitoes, that it didn't bother me much at all.
I also saw eagles circling above the river.
Other pictures of random vistas around the rockies.

Mist rolled in around Hope... not long after I took this picture, I couldn't see a hundred yards ahead of the car.
This looks like a KIA ad.
Harrison Hot Springs is a little resort town near my old hometown. Harrison Lake is an awesome freshwater lake. The resort town means my hometown is pretty as anything, but the cheesy tourists all go to harrison, which is close enough to enjoy, but not so close that I have to hear cheesy new-age music every time I walk to the pharmacy in my old hometown.
That there's Mount Cheam. My old house had a view of that mountain (from a different angle) right out my bedroom window.
Highway 7 between Mission and Harrison Mills is another of the prettiest patches of driving I've ever seen.
My sister lives in Creston, one of the prettiest corners of the world I've seen. The town also enjoys some of the most delicious tapwater in the world... certified. BC's interior is known for that. You wouldn't know it, but that fresh water blew me away, of all things, the entire time I was in Camaba.

I chased a sunset one day in the rental car. Glad I did.



We went down to a riverside park my sister knew. It was great. My sister and her husband and kids played by the water while I took sundown pictures. I also had a really great few conversations with my sister about... all the important stuff.


My niece, and her town.


In Alberta, Highway 22, the Cowboy Trail, is another of the greatest bits of driving I've ever done. In fact, if I'd had time to hit up Vancouver Island as well, it would've been ALL the nicest drives I've done in my life. But we can't have it all.




And I had a good berry crumble at Wendel's in Fort Langley.
Took some pictures of Banff on my way through.


Cutest picture: I was glad to know Red Deer is a Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. That is, until Kim Jong-il drops one on it.
Few more of Red Deer, where my bro lives.

And mushrooms in the garden outside my brother's house.
Pictures of Niagara Falls, Southern Ontario, and who knows what else, coming ... soon? Whenever.
In conclusion, Korea is a land of contrasts. Thank you for reading my essay.


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