We woke up ready for a delicious organic breakfast cooked
for us by Ryan, our host. He indeed made
pancakes form scratch with a fresh Huckleberry reduction. Fantastic!
He also sent us home with a bag of freeze dried morel mushrooms. This will be a great breakfast treat sometime
soon in our eggs.
Then, time for us to hit the road. We drove west along the TransCanada Highway. We
were out of the steep mountains but there were still very big hills and trees
and rivers and lakes. At these lower
elevations we began to see lots of Chicory blooming along side of the road. These are Dick's favorite flower.
We stopped at the Last Spike Site. The place where the final spike was driven in
in the Canadian transcontinental railroad in the late 1880’s. We had been at the corresponding site in
Utah, so this was fun to see this site.
Patti had to take the opportunity to have a shot driving to drive in a
spike. That railroad hammer was heavy! We had been learning about he the trials and tribulations
of the railroads trying to get across these mountains, so nice to reflect on
what a big celebration this had to have been.
Soon we turned south, heading for Washington state. Much of this road was along a river and many
long, narrow lakes, including Vaseaux Lake. It was lovely.
We crossed the US border with only a little problem. We couldn’t remember for sure if we had any
eaten all of our carrots and we did have a half bag of cherries. The crabby border crossing woman lectured
us. Getting into the US is the most
difficult border crossings we ever have.
So, back in the States, and driving now through
Washington. We filled the car with
lower-priced US gas. We drove into a desert as we came south. It was dry, high desert.
Our destination was at our friend Gail’s house in Brewster,
a tiny town in central Washington along the Columbia River. This is at the north end of the orchards and
fruit growing areas in Washington. Her
house was surrounded by orchards. We could
see the young applies which would come in later, but what was ripe was cherries
and apricots. Yum!!!
The last time we were at Gail’s home was for the gathering
to say welcome home and goodbye to her dear husband, Lee, who died about 18
months ago of Leukemia. He passed less
than 3 weeks after the gathering. We
were pleased that we could make the trip to see Lee one last time, and it was
with sadness and fond memories that the three of us talked about Lee’s life,
and his process for passing. We all miss
him very much.
Gail made us some great food, and we spent time catching up
of our current lives, travels and work. Gail
is an especially gifted language coach and American Sign Language interpreter
in the schools. She is such a great gift
to all of the students she works with, both deaf and hearing. She also has a
brand new dog, who was very cute, and thinks he is cat, preferring to perch
high on the tops of couches and chairs. This
recuse dog hit the jackpot with Gail.
So nice to have spend this time together at Gail’s
home.
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