One more road post

One more travel post here, and then it's business as usual but I had to share this bit.

I grew up near the Alberta Rockie Mountains - actually a bike ride away from the Porquipine foothills on a sunny day.
We swam in the icy water of the creek, and every summer moved our trailer into Waterton Lakes National Park.  we hiked and biked the trails,  and boated and swam in those frigid glacial lakes.   And every Saturday night we went to the dance hall and danced to whatever live band was playing.  The campground usually had a brown bear or two roaming, looking for tidbits.  The deer tiptoed daintily through nibbling on various shoots and leaves.  They liked ritz crackers too and were tame enough to take one from my hand if I stayed very still.  Lots of mountain memories.

This is Castle Rock.  Doesn't it look like a fortress?

The river here west of the great divide, flows toward the Pacific Ocean.  It really is that green and milky - runoff from the mountains I suspect.  No signs of flood damage on this side of the great divide - that water all flowed east and we are still picking up the pieces around here...

The Trans Canada Highway flows through the mountains like a river,  up through Banff National Park climbing higher and higher across the border into BC and into Yoho National park, past three Valley Gap, up through the Kicking Horse Pass and into the town of Golden - always a good place to gas up because you don't want to drive the Roger's pass between Golden and Revelstoke without a full tank of gas.
 And...might as well have have road food. Road food is fun - indulgant and full of stuff that probably isn't good for me but believe it or not a MacDonald hamberger, frys and coffee taste pretty good sitting on a bench in the sunshine  - I'm always surprised at how good the coffee is there - must be the mountain water.. 

Then it's back behind the wheel and on  up over the high Roger's Pass to the summit, down into Revelstoke and on into the lush Shushwap valley  and past Shushwap Lake with all its floating houseboats.  I listen to lots of music - good driving music - Elton John and Leon Russell rocking, Carol King and James Taylor crooning, Oscar Peterson and Stephan Grappelli jazzing up some standards.  And I sing along, permanently stamping the tunes in my brain and turning them into middle of the night ear worms. 

The signs are out - Elk on road, Moose on road, big horn sheep on road - except they weren't.  Still, it's good to keep a lookout, although it would have been fun to see some wildlife.

And now, I'm back, and in the garden weeding, as the garden literally exploded in the week I was gone.  We had our first feed of new potatoes last night and I'm racing the slugs for the lettuce.  And, so it goes.