Vacation Conversation

I LIKE THAT our August 2012 two-week vacation landed us first in a town called Yale. We left Campbell River on August 2^nd at 2:30 a.m. with little conversation, boarded the ferry, sailed to the mainland, travelled east on the Trans Canada Highway and stopped to explore the Historic Yale Museum. Our travel conversation on this first leg of our journey to Saskatchewan consisted mostly of upbeat plans to explore as many small towns as time would allow.

Yale was quite a nice surprise. Their museum archives the way of life in the mid-1840s and praises the work of the thousands of Chinese immigrants who built the expansive Canadian Railway. The comical aspect of the museum was the amount of energy put into trying to explain the Sasquatch phenomenon.

Later, we took a lunch break at the Alexandra Bridge rest stop and shared our passion for the simplicity of dining out of the back of our vintage van. Frank calls it chuck wagon meals. A path through the forest took us to the decommissioned Alexandra Bridge. It’s a sturdy structure that still withstands the pushing power of the mighty Fraser River.

We carried on to Kamloops and spent the evening with Frank’s daughter. She kindly offered us a bed in her home, but we chose to spend the first night of our adventure on the bunk. Frank whispered to me that we would change our direction and travel on Yellowhead Highway 5 the next day.

Historic Yale

Alexandra Bridge