I am at the Internet Cafe in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. They only charge six Canadian dollars for an hour of computer use. After the exchange rate, they are practically giving away computer time. I had a chance to answer all my old e-mails and even surf the net a bit.
I was informed by my group that I was mistaken in my last update. Up until my last update, we actually had not had a single day without rain.
After we left Jasper we went to Maligne Lake. It is a very nice lake, but of course, it was raining and we were not very enthusiastic. Then we went to see two water falls. Even in the rain, they looked nice. We also drove by the highest point in the Canadian Rockies. Mt. Robson was covered in clouds and we didn't see a thing. That night we stayed at the Buffalo ranch and saw American Bison.
The next day we saw some very large and impressive waterfalls in Wells Gray Provincial Park. We also saw a Mama Bear eating roughage to clear out its butt plug after the long winter and her cub. After lunch we loaded up a small fleet of canoes and headed out onto Clearwater Lake. Wells Gray PP has only one long dirt road into it, and after we paddled away from the end of the road we saw very few people.
We paddled for about three hours and then set up camp on the side of the river. It was one of those perfect spots. A lake with water so clean you could drink it, surrounded by pine tree covered hills, with snow capped peaks in the background.
Some of us went out for a paddle again, and naturally, some canoes were overturned and a few people went swimming. After we warmed up, we had a bar-b-que and my passengers drank the nine bottles of wine they had purchased in Okanagan. Luckily, we actually did not have a single drop of rain this day.
We went for a mid-night paddle on the lake and then I took my sleeping bag for a hike until I found a nice place to sleep. I slept so well that I did not get back to camp until 10am the next morning. Breakfast was over and the canoes were already loaded. All I had to do was hop in and start paddling.
After our wilderness adventure we headed over here to Vancouver, in the rain. We took a little tour of the city yesterday and today is a free day for all of us. I have been trying to take six of them skydiving, but it has been rainy and cloudy. I hope this is the last trip I ever do with eight British people. They brought the weather from London.
I have learned a lot about Canada in the last two weeks. It turns out that they are, technically speaking, not the 51st state of America. They have a much larger British influence than I had previously thought. They are also as ignorant about America as we are about them. That leads me to believe that it is a separate country.
In Jasper, the sun set after nine pm, but it did not get dark until well after 11pm. Also, to make matters worse, the sun rose at around 4 am, but it got light well before that. They have less than 5 hours of darkness every night, and it is not even the solstice yet. I generally need eight hour of sleep each night, in the dark. I have been having a hard time getting enough sleep. I usually wake up when it gets light and cover my head with the sleeping bag.
At least it is easy to get to camp before sunset every day.
It is amazing how high the north star, Polaris is. I got used to seeing it on the horizon in Mexico. It it well over 50 degrees over the horizon now. I can't wait to see it from Alaska next month.
While I was in Mexico last winter, I read a really bad Clive Cussler book. From the book I learned that the Southern Cross constellation is about 30 degrees away from true south. That means that it can be seen from as far north as northern Mexico. Amazingly it was true, I could see the Southern Cross from the beaches of Mexico.
Well, that is all that is on my mind for now.
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