I drove North to Canada on 30 June 2002. A friend has a share of a condominium at "The Grand Okanagan Resort" at Kelowna, British Columbia. It had been close to 30 years since I had been in Canada. There was not anything that appealed to me as a vacation. I was more into Yellowstone style vacations. The decision to go was not a simple one but I thought a trip would be worth it and arranged to drive there. Driving with a speed limit in kph in an automobile with a speedometer in mph was really different. I had been told by locals to really obey the speed limit and was passed constantly. Being passed constantly made me really nervous because it violated rule #1 of driving with traffic.
When I told the story to locals, they asked me if anyone passed me on the right. Their comment was that you know when you are really holding up traffic because they will pass you on the right side. You have to remember that most of the Canadian roads I was driving on only had one lane in each direction. Passing on the right side of the road meant that they were passing you off of the pavement. I don't know if that was a joke but I thought it was a good idea to drive with traffic.
The real surprise, however, was Canada Day. Some of the stores that were open had birthday cakes for their customers. I could not eat the cake because I am a diabetic but it was the thought that appealed to me. The end result was a totally enjoyable day and a complete surprise. In addition, this little vacation also surprised me in other ways. For example, I walked farther every day than I would normally walk in a week and enjoyed it. I went for a tour of Kelowna in a "LARC V" landing craft from the Vietnam war. If you want to see what a "LARC V" is, visit "Harbour Hopper Tours". I was totally out of character because I never do things like this.
Yellowstone Vacation - I visited Yellowstone National Park again this year. It was interesting for a couple of reasons. I really got to see the Beehive Geyser erupt. I found that the recent rains had dropped the activity of the Broad Fire to a point that smoke can not be seen.
On one of my trips to Old Faithful, I stopped at the Lower Geyser Basin. I walked in past the Paint Pots and passed a lady that reminded me of someone I had not seen for 20 years. I never considered that it could really be her and just thought she looked like how I thought Goldie would look like. Fortunately, she was more with it and waited until I was walking back to my car. She walked towards me and said something like "Kent!". I knew at that moment that it really was Goldie. I was too pleasantly surprised to be embarassed at not recognizing her.
When I was about 6 years old, we moved into a new house that was built across the street from where she lived. We basically grew up together. The people with her wanted me to tell stories about trouble she got into when she was young. The problem was trouble "she got into" because all I could remember is trouble "we got into". Of course, this was when we were very young. If Goldie got into trouble when she was older, I never saw it. There was a real diversion on the kind of work kids did. Girls worked around the house and boys worked on the farm or ranch. I didn't have any sisters and my brother was 4 years younger. So, I learned to drive when I was very young. I tell people that my 1st 100,000 miles were driven before I got a drivers license at age 16. This may be an exageration but not a massive one.
I went back to see where the fire was that I saw burning in 2001. So, I have a picture of what the area burned by the Sulfur Fire of 2001 looks like from the road. I also drove around the Firehole Lake Road. It was the one made notorious by the new road buckling from thermal heat. They built a good road and when the temperature got up to 150+ deg. Farhenheit, it started buckling. When they measured the temperature of the asphalt, it was 175.
I finally found a parking spot where you hike in to see the Fairy Falls. I had never seen as many free spaces as I did this year. I walked up to the gate that is used to keep motor vehicle traffic out and found the reason. There was a bear warning. Two adult grizzilies had been seen in the area and it was recommended that you pay attention and not hike alone. One was an adult male (boar) and the other was an adult female (sow) with 2 cubs. I am not usually intimidated by bears but this time I was. I didn't have to turn back because there were 2 couples right behind me and I asked them if I could tag along. They basically said, "Why sure you can". What we didn't find out until we were walking back was that there was the remains of a bison calf about 100 feet from where we joined up. The Fairy Falls is similar to Bridle Veil Falls in Yosemite or Multnoma Falls in the Columbia River Gorge area. Photographically it is very similar to Multnoma because it is alway in the shade. In case you are interested, we never saw any of the grizzilies. I have never seen a grizzly in the wild.
The last place I visited this year was Old Faithful. I walked up to see Beehive and then followed the trail to the observation point for Old Faithful. I have seen Old Faithful from many angles but never from 200-300 feet higher than the geyser. This was a unique view.