continental divide – Some call it red

Apparently I have a knack for two things: disappearing and unemployment.

I don’t think either are necessarily bad things. The summer when I was 20 I decided to go live in Japan for three months without telling anyone (except for my parents because I was a courteous daughter and still living with them at the time). I remember the Friday before I left my friend asked me to hang out the week after and I replied with a maybe. Then when he messaged me the next week asking what time I could meet I wrote back “Sorry can’t make it, in Japan.”

I don’t know if I thought I was being exceptionally devious or what, but the funny thing was the next year I did the exact same thing to the same friend when I went to visit Ireland for a month. Whenever we hang out now he always says “see you later, assuming you’re in the country.”

As for the unemployment part… I’m sure some of you recall my constant posts complaining about my job. Well as it turns out last month my mom was going to be travelling to BC for a couple weeks and invited me to go with her. So I requested a week off with the manager..

“Absolutely not,” she said, “in fact I’m giving you far more hours than you even agreed to work that week without asking you because I’m so unreasonable and crazy.”

“No worries,” I replied, “you can put me on the schedule as much as you like, just keep in mind that I won’t be showing up because I’m quitting this dumpy hell hole.”

Then I trashed the place.

Okay, that’s not exactly how it happened. (The more boring version includes me handing in two weeks notice and her spending a full hour trying to convince me to stay.)

Anyway, I was clearing the hundreds of photos I took off my camera just now and thought I might as well share some of them with you guys rather than letting them rot away in hard drive obscurity 🙂

The morning of departure:

I kid you not I did not place Rupert next to my stuff.. he went and sat there because he knew something was up and he hates to be left behind. Unnecessary worry because he had a reason to come on the trip anyway.

What I really like about driving through this part of Canada at this time of year is you really get a full spectrum of weather.

Field is an awesome spot to stop to let the dogs out because they have a lovely park to walk through right by the highway. Case in point-

Pretty, right? Got a pic snapped with the mountain. The snow was pretty deep there.. to give an idea..

Join me for a snowy picnic, anyone? Of course by the time you get to BC it’s all lush greenery and nice temperatures.

Hope is absolutely one of my favourite places. Real small town in the middle of the mountains. It’s just gorgeous and has a really unique feel.

Finally made it to our destination (Chilliwack) after splitting the drive into 2 days. Chilliwack is a nice city in the Fraser Valley, it’s also surrounded by mountains, they’re just not as on top of you as they are in Hope. It’s a big farming place:

Seriously look how green it is! Maybe it’s just cause I live in Calgary where everything is either covered in snow or brown and dead, but I can’t get over it. So nice 🙂 I like this pic because it is Chilliwack to a T. This is just a hobby farm, so this is a picture of someone’s backyard with their cows and their green space… you know how it is.

Speaking of cows

I got to visit a whole bunch of them! I know a lot of people think they’re gross, but I think they’re so cute. This baby cow wagged its tail at me and kept licking my hand, like a puppy. Mad love it.

You know you’re in farming country when…

One lady commented “surely there are better things to take pictures of” when she saw me snapping this. Umm, no. There really aren’t. I found it pretty amusing that they needed to specify so many different animals.

I entered Rupert into the dog show while we were there, here we are competing against the rest:

This judge didn’t end up picking Rupert, can you believe that? We both took it pretty hard. So we trashed the place. And then Rupert took a nap.

Just kidding. Actually one of the judges who had great taste did take a liking to Rupert and awarded him Winners Dog, if that means anything to any of you.

So a week and a half later and it was time to say goodbye to the green stuff.

We took the Crowsnest Pass home (the longer, more scenic route). Spent the night in wonderful Castlegar (above) and hit up a few touristy spots.

I can always tell I’m getting closer to home when I see the snow creeping up again.

And what’s up with this? For whatever reason the person who designed this map decided to include a single tree on this random stretch of road to account for the massive forest surrounding the highway. Thank you, GPS.

And the continental divide. Once again inaccessible thanks to the mass accumulation of snow. At least this was taken in April so it’s not totally unreasonable. This was the situation a few days ago: