Back On The Road

I spent another day in Nelson, taking advantage of the break from the road. I caught up on emails, blogging and laundry. But I knew that it was time to move on, so I set my sights on Seattle, and the next morning I was off.

I decided not to take the same route back into Washington state, as I had seen on the map that some of the areas of British Columbia just north of Idaho looked to have some spectacular mountains, so I set out on Route 3 east. It seemed intuitively wrong to do so, since all of my trip to this point was about pushing west and north as fast as I could. But again, the lack of a pressing agenda freed me up to take liberties with my plan, and I had a feeling I was in for some spectacular scenery.

A lot of old, rusted out Rabbit diesels I saw on the way out of Nelson. Ah, childhood memories...

I could not have been more right about my suspicions of the area. The highway began with mountain views as the road followed the edge of the Kootenay River, but as I entered Stagleap Provincial Park near Salmo, it quickly opened up into a winding climb that reached 5819 feet at its peak; the highest all weather highway pass in British Columbia, and one of the highest paved roads in all of Canada! I stopped several times to take pictures and video, realizing that neither could do justice to what I was seeing in person. (I had actually come to that conclusion pretty early on in the trip.)

Nope, this doesn't even come close to showing you how amazing this was.

At least my ride looks good...

Apparently in Canada, they put up signs along the road to let people know where artists' studios are so people can actually stop and buy stuff. Here's a little hint, U.S.A. - start doing this now!

Welcome to Idaho, part 2.

Saw this just as I passed the border. I don't know what they were trying to grow, but it looked cool.

The crossing back into Idaho was uneventful (again, this border guard was also amused by my straw bale workshop story), and I linked back up with route 90, feeling a certain amount of deja vu as I drove through the same leg of highway that I had been on over a week ago. Once I reached Spokane, I decided to call it quits for the day, being that Seattle was most of a days drive from there, and it would serve nothing to show up in the city late at night. I settled into a motel, preparing myself for more highway miles the next morning.