It has been three years since we went on a long trip strictly for a holiday. We went to Ottawa in Dec. 2019 for our daughter-in-law’s art exhibit opening and did a quick drive to New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island to find a couple of geocaches since we had yet to find any in those two provinces and we spent 6 weeks in Texas in 2021 helping our son and daughter-in-law while he recovered from knee surgery. During this trip we finally met our granddaughter who was born in March 2020 just before COVID-19 shut down the world. She was almost 19-months old by the time we saw her in person. What a joy that was!

But today – yay, yay, yay – we are heading out on a road trip just for fun and adventure. The past 2 years have been very long for everyone and it is wonderful to be returning to some normalcy.

We would have liked to take a road trip to Texas and then go east to Kentucky, and Tennessee and the other southern states, or to Paris and then tour around Europe, but I don’t yet feel quite comfortable enough to do either of those. So we decided to drive across our country again. We spent 16 weeks crossing Canada in 2014 and did most of the ‘must see’ things.

This trip will be different. For one thing we are going north and taking more country roads through small towns, and secondly, we began geocaching as a hobby in 2015 so on this trip we will also be taking our time and searching out some geocaches each day.

We left home at 1 o’clock and only planned to drive to 100 Mile House, which is about a three-hour drive (I did mention we would be taking our time on this trip).

John likes taking roads-less travelled so we turned off the Trans-Canada at Squilax and went through Adams Lake.

The grass and leaves are all lovely shades of green, not yet dried out by heat and dust.

We drove for quite awhile alongside the North Thompson River and it is flowing fast and high with spring runoff.

During one of our geocache stops I spotted this interesting mushroom. I don’t know one fungi from another but I liked the decorative lacing on this one. There were also wild strawberries in bloom.

As we drove further north and to a higher elevation it was very noticeable that spring comes a bit later here. At home the leaves were full out but these ones still had the yellow-green colour of newly opening leaves.

We drove through Louis Creek, Barriere and Little Fort before turning off onto Highway 24 to make the connection to 100 Mile House. John took another turn onto Horse Lake Road for the final 32 kilometers to 100 Mile.

We arrived at our hotel in 100 Mile House at 5 PM and were told that a water line had broken and there was no water in town. No hotels had water, no restaurants, businesses or homes. We were advised to drive another 45 minutes and stay in Williams Lake, so off we went again.

Tomorrow we go to Prince George, then Chetwynd, Tumbler Ridge and Dawson Creek before crossing into Alberta. I hope to do a blog each day, but make no promises I will be able to keep to that schedule. It will depend on how many photos I take as the selection and editing is time consuming. I will try my best. I hope you enjoy the trip. I am certainly looking forward to it.