Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Day 19: Coeur d'Alene, ID to High River, AB

Day 19, Thursday: Coeur d'Alene, ID to High River, AB
KM start: 163,631 Km
Trip Meter: 7,174 km
Time Driven: 11:30am - 8:30pm

Thursday I got to sleep in! Paul woke up early to go fishing. I didn't wake up until he'd come back around 9am. Then I made us breakfast, I packed our lunches and then Paul carted all our camping stuff back to the car. 


I assembled the rest of our gear in the cabin for Paul to cart out as well.


We took a few moments to make sure we didn't have any fruit or vegetables remaining since we'd be crossing the border in the next couple hours. I also took a minute to sit down and tally up how much we'd spent that we needed to declare - thankfully we didn't need to total up our gas, accomodations or food, just shopping and souvenirs...and our replacement tent :) We came in at $600 of extra's, which I thought was pretty good for 3 months of travelling in the land of shopping. 

We then headed away from the campground, and it was still beautiful. 


We continued to be impressed by Idaho as we headed North.


And suddenly we were almost back in Canada!


Closer!


And then we were back.



After a super fast border crossing (15 minutes from start to finish with a bare minimum of questions) we were back in BC! Home for me, and another home for Paul.


And suddenly we found ourselves outside of Yahk, where some of my family was from years ago. I was excited to finally see Yahk after hearing stories about it for years - especially as we hadn't planned to be there, I hadn't realized we'd pass through. 



And that was about it. Yahk was tiny. 
Then we headed to Cranbrook. Neither of us had ever been before, but we'd both heard about it so we were glad to see what it looked like. Also Cranbrook was where we finally turned our phones back on...finally back in service! 


We stopped at the Cranbrook Timmies for some much awaited Steeped Tea. I was so happy! 

We also called our families to let them know we were safe and sound - we felt pretty happy to be back in Canada, which was a bit of a surprise to us. 


Then we headed farther North East up towards Alberta, through Fernie.





We loved seeing the mountains after a summer with "mountains" that were really hills.

And look, even BC has roads with water on both sides, take that Florida!


We passed into the Crowsnest Pass area and Alberta.


From there the terrain was beautiful though repetitive, though with more mountains than expected.




We were going to be spending a few days with our dear friends the Siewerts - we hadn't seen them since Christmas!!! They are the couple that did our pre-marital counselling, but more than that, they're our friends - the whole family in fact. We love their kids and we love anyone they love, basically. 

Now the Siewerts live outside of Edmonton (lucky Edmonton) but due to family circumstances they were going to be in the town they both grew up in, High River, staying with Kari's parents. So they invited to stay with them there. This was particularly exciting because High River is where the Canadian TV show Heartland is filmed and I love heartland! Siewerts + Heartland = Happy Tara. It helps that Kari and Krista (youngest daughter) love Heartland, so they were more than happy to take me around, more to come on that in the next post. 

In the meantime we arrived into High River around 8:30pm - Kari and her family hadn't arrived yet, they were still driving down from Edmonton. But Kari's mom welcomed us in and we felt very welcome. Then the Siewerts arrived in a burst of activity and we were soooo glad to see them. We stayed up late talking with them, and making plans for the morning. Just wait until you hear what Paul got to do the next day - you'll more than understand the excitement for some planning. 

No comments:

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...