Journey to Haida Gwaii PART TWO - Athabasca Falls to Prince George

This is yesterday I'm talkin' 'bout, now, because I became too tired and too fascinated with gymnasts last night to continue blogging. So already, I am caught in the journaler's paradox: I write to remember, and as I write, life happens, but I'm too busy writing to experience today what I will write about tomorrow. The good news is there isn't much happening in Prince George right now, as far as I can see. There is a single bird uttering the occasional pained cry - and a bit of traffic - and I'm going to assume that the Dairy Queen across 3rd Street is opening for the day (I can't see it from here). Maybe PG is all a-bustle somewhere else, but I can't see it.



DAY TWO (Monday, August 11th, 2008)

ATHABASCA FALLS

I was, after all, staying just across the highway from the falls themselves. I thought I'd pay them a visit, even though I have been several times before, in winter and in summer. This is easy, because they're in Jasper's "neighbourhood". In winter, the falls are muted by enormous blooms of ice. In summer, they are loud! The interpretive signs frame this place as a battle between water and rock. I would say it is a war, with each chasm being a battle - because, while the water is winning in one place, another channel has been abandoned. The rock won. Now, stairs flow down this abandoned mini-canyon. It's amazing to follow the path that gushing water took for thousands of years before it changed routes. Off to the side is a pothole - a cylindrical carving where water spun round and round and round and eventually down and down - one of many here - but this one now has stagnant water at the bottom of it. In another enormous pothole about the existing flow, two long logs are perfectly wedged up into the rock, at a 37 degree angle to each other. Precisely. Something to hang onto, should you need it.

This was my first time visiting the falls with a digital camera in hand, and I went to town. Everyone else takes pictures of their loved- or tolerated-ones in front of a standard vista; I take pictures of tree branches in front of frozen waterflow, or deliberated overexposed white water that looks like an oddly-shaped negative space in the rock.



JASPER

I forgot how soon it comes. Only a few minutes north of Athabasca Falls, Pyramid Mountain comes into view. This is the backdrop for Jasper, the mountain that flanks its rear. In town, I stopped to gas up car and belly. I was craving A&W (they have a veggie option now - as does KFC!) as I do when I am on the road and culinarily crass, but I convinced myself to find a local place to eat. I found a little organic cafe and had the best vegetarian lasagna of my life so far (sorry mom... and Mondragon...).


THE DRIVE

Uneventful, largely due to a low cloud ceiling. Jasper to Prince George is a considerably shorter distance than I'd imagined. (today is the big day) So I thought I'd stop, here and there. I slipped unobtrusively into B.C. I stopped at the Mount Robson viewpoint, but its head was in the clouds (this is usually the case, but I have seen it, once, perfectly clearly, on one of my two trans-canadian rail trips). I stopped at the Mount Terry Fox viewpoint. There is a Mount Terry Fox! I read the commemorative plackqque, but couldn't see more than the base of the mountain. I visited Rearguard Falls - which was very powerful for a small falls - and stopped at a rest stop where the activity of choice seems to simply be dipping hands and feet in a calmer bend of the mighty Fraser River. History rushed by, occasionally sloshing over jammed driftwood. The rocks on that river beach were an amazing variety of colours - rocks of all mountains upstream, I imagined - arranged by size in the muck (wet mountain dust). I remembered "pudding stones" I have seen, where small rocks become trapped in hardened mud and a conglomerate rock is made, and I considered making a smiley face out of stones for some collector to marvel over in thousands of years. But that would be cheating.

The last part of the drive was quite rainy, but in

PRINCE GEORGE

the sun came out. And stayed out! And was enormously bright. That, plus the wide streets and low buildings and subtle traffic (at 6:30pm) and I swore I was in Lethbridge. I walked around the emptied streets, looking for two "vegetarian friendly" restaurants listed online - finding evidence of neither - taking photos of some of the quite subtly funky graffiti and mural art here and there - and fell into the Waddling Duck Restaurant for dinner. How could I *NOT* go to the Waddling Duck!

When I got home I put on the Olympics and checked my email and Aura, after discussions with her family (who came down from Edmonton to see "Old Growth" in Calgary), has some excited ideas for changes we can make to the show. Which is great. But I'd rather not be thinking about scripts right now, when there's life to live...for a few days at least.

I think I might hit the Dairy Queen for breakfast.