DAY THREE: SQUAMISH TO QUESNEL

Note: I had difficulty getting this blog on from Quesnel (pronounced, we are told, without the "s"). Couldn't do it on Saturday, but this morning. It seems to work. I took down the blog for Day One. It may be that the graphics are too much to load for the wireless system here at the Travelodge in Quesnel. Oh well... I may get to stick some graphics in later.

Saturday, June 23: We could ooh and ah over the beauty of the scenery on this route, but Connie and I agree that two events make our journey via highway 99 worthwhile.

At 4 a.m. this morning the people above us moving around and showering awakened me in the August Jack Motor Inn. You know what that’s like. By 5 a.m. we heard people working outside our ground floor room. The sun wasn’t up yet, but the yard was bathed in the two days after solstice light. Peeking out through the curtains we saw people setting up tents and cooking pots. Several of the men were wearing turbans and the women were wearing saris. Connie talked to one of the men working near our door that opened to the yard. A contingent of twenty-five or thirty Indians were preparing for an annual holy day for their God. They were doing it by preparing all manner of Indian food that they would offer free to the townspeople all day.

When we were packing the car to get on the road, they invited us to come have some of the delicacies they were preparing. A group of women were cooking an Indian version of tempura in large black pots. They insisted that we take some of the goodies with us and filled a large paper plate to overflowing and gave us cups of hot sweet tea with milk. I asked one of the men if they were all from Squamish and he said they were. They intended to have some kind of ceremony at ten o’clock but for the most part they were celebrating their holy day by offering wonderfully prepared food for the town. Such hospitality! I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if at Easter we put up tents and prepared food for the people of the towns where we live.

The second special treat on this route came after we had gone up on some of the steepest inclines (13-14%) in British Columbia as we went from Pemberton to Lillooet on highway 99. We had stopped to run the dogs at a trail head, gotten back in the car, and started up the road when I saw Black bear munching on some leaves not a hundred feet from the car. He was a Black bear, but as is often the case his color was brown. Not ten minutes down the road we met another Black bear by the roadside. By the time I got the camera on him he was in the bushes peering back at me not twenty feet away. Was I in the car? Of course!

Indian hospitality and seeing bears in the wild, what more could we ask? This has indeed been a special day.