From the Rockies to Middle British Columbia

Another travel day. Imagine some clever novelist had put all of their effort into making a road trip into an engrossing read... Then consider the following as a contrast;

We drove and drove and drove to Cache Creek. The end.

Actually there are a few points about today's drive worth recording. The first is the sad story of a "logging town in transition" : Valemount. We had stopped here for supplies. It's on the highway number 5 on the main route from Jasper to Kamloops. You have to exit the highway to drive the main street. The first thing I noticed was that there were a number of buildings that looked disused and that the local department store had a closing down sale "Everything must go". The shelves were quite depleted but there were still some bargains to be had. I picked up an unlikely combination of three tins of smoked mussels and a pair of sneakers for a grand total of $12.45. They even had some reasonable black shoes for $20 but Mary dissuaded me (rightly too.. I had brought my own black shoes which needed only a polish)

Back to Valemount and its plight. The atmosphere in the store was depressing. A young man at the checkout was lamenting his misfortune "how am I going to pay the rent now?". A woman was emptying stock from the shelves and there was no smiling going on. It made me realise how friendly and cheerful most Canadians are because the absence of cheer here was palpable. A wander through the streets later revealed that the decline of the town was a big and explicit issue. Postings in the windows of the closed retail buildings referred to the transition and one shop looked like it was about to reopen as an art gallery. The town seemed to have shifted it's hopes from logging to tourism, but I couldnt see enough of the "critical mass" you need to make this work. The town just isn't big like its rivals. I hope for the locals sake they can make a go of it. Here's a photographic tour of the town.

We did find one focal point though. Hidden behind an ignominious shop front was a friendly little coffee shop. Although they burnt the coffee, this was worth it as the atmosphere was one of friendly chatty conviviality. We enjoyed a coffee each and W had a drink which was pretty much identical in taste to a vitamised Billabong icy pole.

After Valemount it was all downhill, literally. We followed the North Thompson River for kilometers and kilometers. This descent was to finish at Kamloops where we would divert in a westerly direction, heading towards Whistler. There had been some debate about whether we would stay in Kamloops but once we see it we knew that this was not the place for us. It was vast, industrialised, surrounded by denuded hills and plastered with billboards. W's comment was "if they go to so much trouble to build a billboard why do they fill it with this s**t so that you want to shoot yourself in the head when you see it?"

Once you leave Kamloops you enter "the desert of British Coumbia". It's not really a desert but we did pass a complete movieset of a Western town. Clint Eastwood would have looked totally at home in it. Here's some shots from the vehicle of the landscape.

We were very enticed by a park called Brookside which advertised free Wifi as we had been starved of connection for days. A lovely little park. The only problem was the Wifi. It doesn't work... much....at all. Our reactions to this problem cannot be published. We headed out to celebrate my birthday to the Sandman "restaurant". This is really a cafe. The serving sizes were enormous! We wolfed down our Greek food (Greek Style Roast Lamb, Grilled Salmon, Greek Salad and Fries +++, and Manie's Burger). I enjoyed an Okanagan beer. 

We returned to the park and wrestled with the internet. There were moments of blinding functionality interspersed with total disconnection.. it was a minute by minute affair! The cry of "the internet's really fast again" was met with the rapid chatter of keyboards and flurry of fingers on tablets until the simultaneous "Oh no, it's down again!"

It at least enabled me to post my blogs (text only- no way could it handle photographs)

It's my birthday.. I got a surprise cake

Very late at night the internet became reliable. (we investigated the problem earlier by interrogating the Router log and saw how many people were connected and disconnected.. it's happening to everyone every few minutes) These last 6 days postings are thanks to a very very late internet session.That's why there are now photographs in this blog now!