First Principles

To cross the border, we didn’t just stay north on I-5 to make the crossing at Blaine. That would have been a traffic nightmare, especially with Vancouver just over the border. Instead, we went a couple crossing east, to the Sumas, WA/Abbotsford, BC crossing.

We didn’t really get started out on the right foot with our friends to the north, though. So excited were we to check out the crossing and feel like we were really on our way north, we didn’t notice the little line in front of the gate that said, “Stop Here.” So we just pulled in right behind the car in front of us, which resulted in some very un-Canadianesque yelling on the part of the border guard.

After producing our passports and doing our very best to not look like anti-Canadian terrorists, and once the guard saw Eric was in the military, we were waived on through and into a foreign country.

The first thing welcoming us to Beautiful British Columbia, though, wasn’t the big sign shown at the top of this post. No indeed – it was this lovely trailer chiding us to avoid methamphetamines. Mmmmm…. Nothing says “Welcome to our country, Eh!” than a meth-mouth billboard!

It was pretty wet still as we continued eastward towards Hope. (I wonder if Hope, BC, also produces the extraordinary amount of sleazy politicians its Arkansan counterpart boasts…) It was fairly flat and farmish, and the road was a nice divided four-lane. But then we turned north, and then it started to look like the British Columbia we expected to see.

One of the things that kept blowing us away during the whole trip was the abrupt and profound changes we kept going through in terms of climate and geography. When we turned north at Hope, we went from rolling farmland to towering mountains covered in forest and mist.

We also started tracking along the Fraser River. Despite the gray skies that were still lingering on the Pacific side of the Cascades, it was absolutely gorgeous. The pictures just don’t do it justice.

The highway wound down along the river through deep canyons, which necessitated a lot of tunnels.

The color contrasts between the evergreen forests higher on the mountains and the broadleaves down below was incredible, and the hundreds of waterfalls cascading down them punctuated the beauty.

The Fraser River was big and wild, and as it twisted around the mountains, the eddies were fierce. Not the kind of place to take a fishing canoe. It really added to the sense of biggness about everything, a sense that would stay with us for the whole trip.

After we crossed the border, we plugged in my MP3 player with the playlist I’d made for the trip. As Guns ‘n’ Roses and Johny Horton blared on the stereo, we continued north and not so quietly started to hope for the sun to come out and join us for the trip.