The Long and Winding Road or Dining With Death

I'll explain this in a bit.

But now I'm in Tatla Lake, BC. I have reached the point farthest off the beaten track for my entire tour so far. The previous record holder was Plentywood, Montana, which was several hours from Billings and Regina in Saskatchewan. Plentywood is the center of a bustling urban metropolis compared to Tatla. It's about 150 miles of dangerous two lane country highway to reach the next small town. It's got a McDonald's and a grocery store. And because this is Canada, a Tim Horton's.

If one wants more than a grocery store and fast food, it's 8 hours to Prince George or Kamloops, roughly Missoula-sized cities of the Canadian interior (actually, a bit bigger). This means that if you want to buy a new TV, you have to factor in the cost of the hotel room.

Needless to say, the journey here was a bit...complicated. Murphy's Law came into play at several points. We had originally made plans to stay in a small town called Ashcroft, where we would find some people to stay with. Dear old Murphy, however, dictated that in this case where we had the longest to go, the most obstacles would fall in our path. Therefore, my flight from St. Louis was delayed, followed by the most aggressive grilling at the Canadian border yet. Our first two crossings were pretty easy, so my spider sense was telling me that we were due for a difficult crossing. And I was right. Two hours at a border station where I was accused of having a criminal record. "You hesitated before you said 'no.' Why was that sir?" I refrained from saying "because I haven't slept in a bed for 36 hours and 'have you ever been arrested' is not a question I'm asked very often."

After ascertaining that we were neither smugglers, kidnappers, or deliberately flouting Canadian immigration law, we were sent on our way with papers saying "get the hell out of Canada by the 6th of December."

And then it snowed. And then there was a landslide. And we stayed the night at the Yale Motel in Yale, BC. There we learned an important lesson: check the heating before you stay at a motel in winter. You may think it goes without saying that if staying in a motel north of the 49th parallel, there will at least be adequate heating. This is an inaccurate assumption. Coldest night I've ever spent outside of a sleeping bag.

And then came this morning and the rest of the trip. We left civilization far, far behind us. Snowy, crappy roads. Road grit flaring up and blocking the windshield as well as, we later learned, the headlights. We saw signs warning us to be aware of the crossings of bears, badgers, deer, and/or bighorn sheep. While we saw the deer and the bighorn sheep, we only had to stop for a group of horses that were in the middle of the road on the last highway. Don't know what they were doing or where they were going. Probably never will.

I forgot to add, we have been well outside of cell service for 90% of our time since we crossed the border. The region that Trans-Canada 1 (our main northward route) passes through is the Fraser Canyon, and few cell towers penetrate it. Shortly after leaving Yale, we hit one of those rare spots, and learned that our home office was convinced we were stuck in the rockslide and dead. We had seen a section of TC 1 that was a bit confused looking, lots of construction cones and flashing signs, but we did get through. Apparently, this was the site of a major rockslide. The slide had been cleared, allowing us to slip through, but was shortly closed again so that engineers could do some demolition to prevent further rockslides. We got lucky.

We also stopped here:


That, for those with smaller screens, is the Elvis Rocks the Canyon Cafe. It also has a picture of a man in a fedora on its warning sign.

We also had one further diner for breakfast. Our friend from the top of this post.

Finally, however, we arrived here in Tatla Lake, where we are staying at the Tatla Lake Manor. This place has all the perks of a homestay AND all the perks of a hotel. We have our own rooms and bathrooms. We also have a nice older lady cooking meals for us and joining us for dinner. All the guests are together for dinner. I feel like I'm staying at some old English Inn from a Dickens novel. It's gonna be something else. This means we get to meet the other travelers gathering at the Tatla Lake Manor. We already met one old road worker who talked about dangerous animals for an hour.

Ok, this has been a rather longish post for me, so I'm going to sign off for now. Tomorrow I'm going to have some pictures of the area. I'm told it's beautiful, but we arrived in the dark. The sun set at 5:00 today. We are north.