Kamloops Wednesday

Today we left Whistler at some point after lunch and headed for Kamloops. We went through Pemberton, Lillooet, Cache Creek, and a bunch of other tiny little towns and reservations before making it to Kamloops four hours later.

One thing about BC, it's crazy how fast you can leave a city and be in the middle of nowhere. We left Whistler and an hour later we were on this crazy little road through the mountains. In four hours we went from an alpine mountain environment to an arid desert region... and of course I've got pics...


After we left Whistler it wasn't long before Highway 99 got small and full of ruts and bumps. I don't know a lot of people who take this route anymore since the bigger and better freeways were built. But I heard it was a great drive, so we decided to try it out.


This picutre sums up a lot of what we saw for the first hour, except a picture can't bring out the real depth and how BIG everything was. Once and a while we'd go through a small reservation or cluster of houses in the middle of nowhere, which was pretty cool... definitely a different way of life than I'm used to. After a while we climbed high enough to be at snow level, but the roads were clear and it wasn't really that cold. I guess because it's May...


We came around a corner and met this bear on the road. It went into the bushes when we got close but a couple seconds after we passed it was back out there.... so I drove to a safe distance and took this picture. This is full zoom so yeah, I was pretty far away.


There were a lot of lakes too at the lower elevations. The truly amazing thing about this trip though was how fast the landscape changed from this...


... to this. Everything after Lillooet was pretty much arid and desert-like. Southern BC has Canada's only desert, which is the northern end of a path of desert extending up from California. More on that from Osoyoos on Friday...


There's a lot less green than we have on the coast, but there's a lot less rain too... and that's a trade off I'd be willing to take. I know, I know, the coast is really great... but I need sun. Badly.


So here's some more scenery...


And some more...


We got to Kamloops a little after 5 and booked into a small motel that was nice and cheap. This is the view from our door, which is on the back of the building.


And here's one last picture from our room taken at sunset....

Ok so there aren't actually any pictures of Kamloops... pretty bad, seeing it's Kamloops Wednesday. But after finally getting here and getting a motel room, we were pretty tired. So we just ate and called it a day. Tomorrow we're meeting my friend Ali and I'll take some more pictures then.... now it's time for nice sleep...