Day 37 - The Trans-Canada Highway

This post will be a little shorter than usual because we mostly drove today. This may be a pattern as we took three weeks to get to the west coast and only have two to get back.  Before we took off on the long ride we did visit the arboretum in Vancouver which was a riot of plants.  It was so dense with plants some trails were so narrow one had to push your way through.  It had some great flowers in bloom and we lingered probably longer than we should have but it was hard to tear oneself out of the arboreal beauty of the place and sit in the car for hours even if the scenery was beautiful.

Michelle trying to make friends with a pretty skittish dog

We spent the night in a nice dorm at the University of British Columbia.  This was the building across the way

We spent most of the day crossing British Columbia on the Trans-Canada Highway though at times it was a lot less of a highway than we are used to as it often acts as the Main Street in the towns it passes through and thus has traffic lights.  It also is often a single lane in your direction of travel so a slow car really slows you down.  The surrounding scenery is great though as it runs through river valleys surrounded by mountains.   They do have climbing lanes so every once in a while it looks like a NASCAR race when then go back to a green flag with everyone flooring it and getting into the passing lane except the little old lady who is holding things up.  Even the tractor-trailers get in on the act sometimes.

View from the road - Afternoon

View from the road - Evening

Regular Features

Statistics Corner

Provinces involved: Although we tried hard to get through British Columbia we never made it out but we did change time zones so that should count for something.

Charging

VanDusen Arboretum – 3 hours -As it was going to be close to our limit we looked on PlugShare for a charger near the arboretum but could not find the one they indicated but wre pleasantly surprised when we pulled into the parking lot and saw a perfectly good 30 amp charger so the car charged the whole time we were looking at the flowers

Hope Supercharger -30 minutes – Here we met our friend for the day who turned out to be 5000 miles into his almost coast to coast trip from Ontario.  He turned out to be the President of the Electric Vehicle Club of Canada and was very interesting to talk to about the electric car culture in Canada.  They have some huge tax breaks for electric cars and a very good network of chargers that were just donated by some very rich guy.  If Trump wants to make America Great maybe that would have been a better use of his money.

Kamloops Supercharger – 20 minutes.-  We spent the time talking with our friend who was staying the night there.  He had promised us a car show when we got there but it was over by the time we hit town.

Ravelstoke Supercharger – 60 minutes – Having not gotten to eat at the last two stops as there was not a good enough choice for food to stop conversing with our new friend we were ptetty hungry at 8:30 so we repaired to the local pizza place.  The pizza was dreadful but our stomachs felt better.

Church of the Day – Location, location, location.  You can have a bland church if you have a large mountain behind it.

Coolest car of the Day – This Fiat 124 wins by virtue of its chrome bumpers over a Series 3 Alfa and a mid-60’s bug with a roof rack.

Song of the Day  - Rocky Mountain Way – Godsmackut on our way  – Not my favorite song but on our way back to our car there was couple sitting on the sidewalk outside there open motel room door and drinking beer.  As we had been in the Rockies most of the day it seemed like the best choice

Coolest Thing of the Day – Larry – The flowers in the arboretum

Coolest Thing of the Day - Michelle – The entire arboretum