Temp: 38 degrees (100F!!!)
After a nice long sleep, I lazily got up shortly before 10 and made bacon and eggs for breakfast. Lots more hydrating, then packed up the tent, deflated the boat, and packed up all the leftover food. We've gotta learn not to bring lunch and snack foods - what with all the free hotdogs and pop and chips and snacks constantly floating around, I think this is the 3rd year in a row that we packed way too much food.
Well, it's reluctantly time to leave, so we said our goodbyes and were on the road at 12:30. It was already 28 at Green Lake, so considering hot hot it got as we drove south, I'll bet it hit at least 30 at the Lake. By time we stoppen in Cache Creek for lunch, it was 37!!! It held between 35 and 38 all the way to Hope, and was still 28 when we finally got home at 7:30PM.
Why'd it take us an extra 2 hours to get home? Amazingly, it was NOT because of long weekend traffic. We stopped for lunch in Cache Creek and Dinner in Hope, and while in Hope, decided to do the nostalgia tour of all the places I remember from my childhood ... the Fraser banks, the Golf Course, Thackers Mountain, Silver Creek, Bristol Island and the airport area, and a bunch more. That took about an hour.
Thanks to my GPS, which I kept on for the entire drive home, I was able to escape a massive traffic problem at Bridal Falls - apparently there was bad accident at #3 road - that's just about to Abbotsford! That means that this gridlock that's barely moving at 10km/h is backed up for nearly 30km??? No way I'm gonna spend the next 3 hours in this, so I veered off at the Agassiz/Rosedale turnoff and headed for the Lougheed. I would have taken the lougheed back in the first place, but because of our detour to Silver Creek, it was much quicker to just jump onto the #1, but I half expected to be turning back to the Lougheed at Rosedale anyway. What I didn't expect is that I'd hit gridlock again at the other side of the bridge! "That's okay", I exclaimed, "I know a shortcut right on the othe side of the bridge that will bypass Agassiz"... BUT, the road was closed!!! WTF? We flipped the radio to the traffic channel, and sure enough there was an accident on the other side of Agassiz and traffic was at a stand still. Yikes! We're still at least 8 KM from that accident, this could mean another one or two hour delay! Thank to Lord for GPS though - it found me a nice path zig-zagging around the big standstill, and popped me out just ahead of the accident. was now ahead of an hour's worth of long-weekend traffic and had the road practically to ourselves!
I filled up with gas in Hatzic, where it was only $1.09 a litre (sheesh, ONLY $1.09... how bad does that sound...), and got back on the road. What's this? not even a killometer down the road, and traffic's backed up again! Maybe it's just slow going through Mission city center, or maybe it's another accident - well, I'm not waiting to find out, so I zip up onto 7th and headed west without any anoying traffic. "Hey Carole, the GPS says we're heading straight towards Silverdale... didn't you say there were properties for sale in Silverdale? Let's check'em out!" So we took another detour through Silverdale, and drove over the Ruskin Dam and back down through Whonnock to the Lougheed. From there is was a nice easy drive home - no traffic congestion at all.
We unpacked, I watered all the thirsty plants, chatted with my Dad for half an hour about their trip to Trail this weekend where they helped my brother move (He starts a new job as an electrician's apprentice in Trail tomorrow), then we watched Rock Star Supernova, and had a nice sleep in our comfy bed.
Posted by Calvin at August 7, 2006 11:00 AM