Sunday.
We cry as Chantal and Frances June wave us off from the Finlayson house. We cry as we drive through Quadra Village and North Park, realizing its the final time. We cry as we pull up to Wildfire Bakery to buy our last loaves (a hearty whole wheat and a chewy Olive loaf call to us) and bid farewell to John McMillian, Scotty D and Cai. Then, miraculously, we stop crying! Johnny Mac holds back the tears as we pull away, and it's off to Fry's for pizza - a peace offering from Jon to Jenessa for missing Pizzeria Farina in Vancouver on Saturday night. We get there 15 minutes early. Enough time to chat with Byron and eat a hot cross bun before we take our Beast Pepperoni pie, chorizo and dozen eggs and book it to the ferry. 
We barely make it on the 1pm, the last car on, but it was worth it! We all take a nap in the back and Jon remarks that this is a nice way to take the ferry (dozing with the ocean just outside our window). As we're pulling in to Tsawassan we spot a seal leaping up and out of the water. Jon squeezes off the bed and out the door to get a better look and...disaster strikes! His knee! What luck! Locked up, unable to straighten it, he hobbles to the ferry port hole to get a better look at this leaping seal (which I thought was a dolphin) and exclaims that he's "Never seen that before!" Distracted from what just happened by the fantastic acrobatic display, we exit the ferry (last ones off) and hit the highway. Time for a coffee! We stop at a shell and fuel up the van and ourselves. As I'm sure you know, we are quite particular about our coffee's so were sure to stock up on some of Yoka's impeccable Dark French roast before we left. 2lbs! The Langley girls in the gas station roll their eyes and snicker as we brew our own cuppa's next to the latte machine with our Aeropress. It's good. I commiserate with Jon about his knee, which is ok, but tender and a bit swollen. Finally, we leave the station and are on the #1! We cruise quite uneventfully for a while until we spy the first prow of the Rocky Mountains. We are bedazzled! We start to climb and the snow increases dramatically. Juni has never seen piles of snow before, so we're sure to point it out to her. 
I'll take this time to note so far she has been a dream in her carseat!
Waterfalls, rocky cliffs, vast rolling hills. It feels as if our lungs and hearts are opening wide and stretching as the earth opens up her deep crevasses to us. We start to feel the weight of our former lives peeling off like a sunburn, filled with glorious memories of a dreamy summer, and fluttering away behind us. We feel good.
It's at about this point that Juni let's us know she's had just about enough driving for the day. We come upon some construction signs, and crest a hill to see a line of traffic parked on the shoulder. A flagger approaches our window and let's us know that the road is closed. A tanker truck flipped and spilled its load. She says the road has been closed all day, but should be open in about 15-20 minutes. We cannot believe our luck! Our original plan was to get on the 9am ferry, but we found more interesting things to do as the day progressed (like watch FJ and Juni wrestle and eat pizza). While we're parked Juni takes her turn in the captains seat, and we fantasize about life in TO.
In less than 10 minutes the line starts moving and we begin our descent into Princeton. It looks quaint and sleepy from above. We decide to stay here for the night. After taking the short trip around the very small town, we are forced to settle on Dairy Queen for dinner. It was a hard decision, between DQ, Subway and Pasha's Pizza and Indian food (which looked like the kind of place you would get food poisoning). It was everything we dreamed it would be... awful. With our belly's full, we began prowling about town looking for a place to park for the night. Our first choice is a dark residential street, but Jon quickly realizes he should have used the bathroom before we left. Back to the gas station we go, and Jon decides he didn't like how dark that street was. We start creeping around the rigs looking for a suitable place and somehow end up on a narrow dirt road with a straight drop off to the river on one side, a deep ditch on the other and dark woods all around us. Jon stops suddenly and says "This will have to do." I reply that he must be crazy if he thinks I'm going to sleep here. Back to the rig lot and we cozy in between two sleeping trucks. Into our jammie's, we struggle to get comfortable and I start to panic a bit about the close quarters, feeling a little claustrophobic, and like we were fucking nuts for thinking this was a good idea. Jon reassures me that it's our first night, and if it doesn't work we'll buy a trailer and change our plans. I breathe a little easier and turn out the lights and quickly fall asleep.
It's a restless night, Juni wakes often looking for reassurance at the breast, and I keep wondering when dawn will come. Finally, finally, I open my eyes to light peaking through our makeshift curtains. A grey morning. It's about 7:30. We rise, make our coffee's, get dressed and hit the road without breakfast. Our destination is OK Falls, only about an hour away.
The terrain remains beautiful as we pass through valleys and barren orchards. Too bad the fruit stands are all closed until late summer.
We pull into Keromeos, quite obviously a tourist town with signs for fruit stands, rodeos, and gift shops. We merge onto the 3A, only 45 more km to go, and Jon points out The Grist Mill. A historic reenactment on the story of Red Fife wheat being outlawed. We make a quick stop at a rest area and continue on.
Juni just nods off as we pull into Okanogan Falls, where we will stay for a few days with our friends Jeff, Mel and their 2 boys. I'm quickly reminded of the night Kate and I spent here on our long Journey home from Regina nearly 2 years ago.
I'll sign off here for the day. Hopefully I can keep up on the blog. It is, unfortunately, quite distracting from the road and all the sites to see.
