Home again, home again, jiggety jig!
What an amazing week away for us. We packed so much into a few days it is as if we had our lost summer vacation after all. So grateful for the week of compassionate leave! There was time to rest and catch up after the craziness of this autumn and a miserable summer.
It was grand to see the turnout for my husband's mother's memorial service and to hear the stories of the many relatives and friends who had known her well over the past 9 decades. She was such a forceful personality that we found it odd that she didn't suddenly appear from behind a door or curtain and let us know she had overheard us talking about her. haha A family dinner at her favourite pub ended a good day of memories.
The next morning we left Kelowna for Vancouver. Periods of rain left the high mountain Coquihalla Pass freeway covered in puddles, but there was neither ice nor snow, only a few miles of fog to endure. Being a Sunday morning there were fewer semi rigs and we made fantastic time into the city. No accidents, bumper to bumper traffic, nor road construction slowed the drive this time.
Meeting up with our son was wonderful. We miss him terribly as he is such a character and brings us much laughter these days as he is being restored to his old self after some rough times. We toured his art studio, went to the exhibit at the gallery where he works, dragged him around on a mad shopping spree that made him feel like a kid at Christmas, walked through the huge red and golden maple leaves that covered the sidewalks and streets, viewed Georgian Bay (aka and properly called The Strait of Georgia to visitors) and all the massive freighters, ooh'd and ahh'd over the new Port Mann bridge, bought tons of tea in Little India and Chinatown, visited until we almost ran out of words and enjoyed sumptuous meals at Vancouver's best ethnic restaurants...hang the expense. One night we purchased a selection of cheeses and crackers, wine and beer and enjoyed our family tradition of laying around in the hotel room snacking and chatting for the evening. One thing we don't do is watch tv together because we never have time with all the other fun things there are to do in Vancouver. Our son doesn't even own a television. He is too busy working to fritter away time with The Boob Tube and I hope this winter I can be that busy as well!!
Should any of you happen to find yourselves in Vancouver in the near future and enjoy great food, check out Japanese Restaurant Shiro and for Italian, Campagnolo is a must. Shiro has about the most authentic Japanese cuisine available on the Canadian west coast and the deep fried chick pea salad at Campagnolo definitely deserves its place on the list of "101 Things to Do in Vancouver". There are so many wonderful Vietnamese pho restaurants it is impossible to list them all. As a kid I never understood why my oriental soups came with a broad, flat bottomed, high sided spoon. I was in my 30's before I discovered how to chopstick the meats,noodles and veggies out of my soup and onto the spoon before glugging down the broth at the end.
My husband was delighted to find his favourite Pendleton wool shirts at 3Vets and some great knives at Cookworks. In Chinatown he finally found a proper water boiling kettle at a price he could afford.......FINALLY. He has been seeking one that will boil water and maintain it at the proper temperatures for his various favourite kinds of tea. I got him his Christmas present early as well: a new Swiss army knife with many more useful attachments than his old one. I found some lovely Japanese greeting cards, some chopsticks to replace my old broken down ohashi and a winter coat in a style that I have wanted for years but haven't been made for a couple of decades. FINALLY! I WILL be warm this winter.
It was very hard not to feel depressed the day we left Vancouver to return to the prairies. I admit it. The humid air, the rain rather than snow in winter, the low hanging clouds, the lack of ice on the streets, the ocean, the flowers still blooming in November, the retail and entertainment venues, the huge number of people on the streets.........they are all good for me. It was a beautiful sunny morning when all 3 of us left Vancouver, us to head home and The Boy to Berlin for a work related gig. I was able to keep a stiff upper lip until we got to Chilliwack and then I broke down and sobbed. The thought of returning to ice and snow and freezing cold was less than appealing.
We drove to Revelstoke for the night and found an hilarious old motel that has been redecorated and spruced up considerably. The ski season hasn't started yet and so there were few guests anywhere in town that night and the proprietor of the motel told us to choose any room we wanted. We chose one on the top floor in the back of the motel, away from the highway and no one else was back there so we knew it would be quiet (except of course for the ear splitting squeal of braking trains as they rolled into town every hour throughout the night on the tracks that turned out to be about 25 feet from our room window. hahaha It was like fingernails on a chalkboard only amplified about 1000%!!!) The room was so large we could have rented it out for dances! As we drove earlier between Kamloops and Sicamous we passed the resort areas on Blind Bay where I had my most favourite vacations as a child, so the memories were intact even though the area has turned from a gracious resort area to a tourist trap over the past 35 years.
After our fun night in Revelstoke (home made cannelloni dinner at Isabella's...YES!) we headed for Calgary the next morning still revelling in the fun we had experienced thus far. By the time we hit Field our memories were all ready fading as we drove smack dab into the entrails of the first major winter snow storm of the year. The highway became a rink of icy rivulets and solid ice chunk ruts, polished snow and flying gravel from the sanding trucks and snowploughs trying desperately and inadequately to clear the mess and get vehicle tires back onto dry pavement.
Our car's studded tires performed admirably and that, combined with my husband's excellent driving skills, kept us moving and on the road. A number of faster drivers who passed us were not so fortunate. We came across 8 accidents between Field and Calgary, all involving the vehicles who had been in too much of a hurry for the road conditions and who didn't have proper winter tires. We reached a top speed of 60km per hour between Field and Calgary and it took hours and hours to get back to my parents' warm condominium to spend the night. Instead of returning home the next day we spent an extra day in the city with members of our families in order to avoid driving in a second storm that hit closer to our home town that day.
And so, yesterday we crawled home the rest of the way. But as we drove north and east from Calgary, gradually the ice and snow faded from the roads and we only lost an hour of time. Our 5 hour journey was just over 6 hours and we are grateful to be here, back safely to the land of ice and snow, scheming about new ways to head back to Vancouver again at some point before winter here is over.
We have had both church services now in both towns this weekend and are back into the swing of life here at home. It is all good......ice and snow and all.
Oh, except for the bad colds we are both coming down with......welcome back to winter!
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