Our little adventure

Sang and I visited Chris and Claire last week. We drove up on the Yellowhead, in a rented Chrysler Pacifica. We spent some time in West Ed Mall, and had lots of fun watching the sea lions, and exploring the shops.

FSJ was cold, but the company was wonderful. Chris and Claire were great hosts, and Sang and I just had fun hanging out, enjoying their company. Madalyn is even more beautiful in person than she is in pictures, if you can believe that. She is at a wonderful age, where she is too young to play strange or care that I am not mommy or daddy. She let me hold her and soothe her, and one morning, she even treated me to a couple of rare smiles. Beautiful girl - you are a heart breaker.

One the way back home, Sang and I thought it would be a treat to drive through Jasper and Banff. Instead of taking highway 40, we thought it looked faster to take route 734, or Forestry Trunk Road. Well, the 40 might have been curvey and longer, but 734 wasn't paved. We soon realized that going only 60 km/hr wasn't going to allow us to arrive at our destination in a timely manner, and I was not enjoying the thought of driving down this narrow, gravel, steep and snowy (though sanded) road once the sun set. We noticed a sign that said that the 40 and Grande Prairie were only 80 km away, if you took the turnoff. Well, we figured that it was better to head for the main highway.

Unfortunately, this road was worse. It was narrower. It was snowier. It was not sanded. Shortly after we pulled onto it, the car slipped to the side a little and we almost fell off the road. As we had seen almost no other traffic since we left the yellowhead, I thought it prudent to drive a little slower, because if we went into the ditch, there was going to be no one coming for a while, and I now had no idea where I was - so it might have taken CAA a while to find us. Driving now at about 40 km/hr, we saw two big shapes on the road ahead. They weren't moving.

"Don't worry," Sang assured me, "those moose don't have horns, so they're female. They won't charge us."

As we got closer (about 5 meters), they slowly walked off the road. And, we saw our first wild moose.

After a little while, we saw some more big shapes on the road. These had big horns. And weren't moving. Sang reassured me that we "probably" weighed more than a moose. Thankfully, this bull moose also eventually wondered off the road, then stared at us as we drove by. Very cool to see a moose that close. But, kinda scary too. They are really, really big.

Behind the moose, just hanging out, was a reindeer. It scampered and leaped away, and had delicate (compared to the moose), fuzzy horns. I did not know that moose and reindeer hung out together. But, these were.

Shortly after that, we saw another pair of cow moose, but these were off to the side of the road.

We reached the end of this snowy road to meet a cross street, and the only sign read "private road, travel at your own risk". How inviting.

We figured we would turn north, back towards the yellowhead direction, and hope for the best. We soon saw a sign that said "caution: high pressure natural gas". I'll admit, I thought there was a good possibility we would blow up on the road (this one was still narrow, but sanded, again). After a little while, we thought we might be traveling in the wrong direction, so we carefully turned around.

We drove and drove, and nothing. So, we pulled off as close to the side of the road as we could, turned on the four ways and waved down a semi to ask for directions. The driver told us to turn back around again, and drive about 15 - 20 minutes.

We drove again, and after 20 minutes we were not at the highway, and by now it is very dark and I am getting very anxious. We are still in the middle of the forest, with nothing but trees, the only lights those ominous gas refining burning chimneys, so Sang waved down another truck, who said we were only a couple miles away from the 40. Finally we reached it, and I have never been so happy to see paved roads.

After a bit more driving, this time, thankfully, with lots of other cars, on a paved and maintained road, we ended up in Grande Prairie, where we spent the night, abandoning our idea of driving through Jasper and Banff. We figured we had already had enough adventure. The two hour drive from FSJ to Grande Prairie took us seven hours.