When I wrote last, from Blackfoot, Idaho, the pastoral scene above from a short walk in the hills of Idaho was still fresh in my mind. Here,the temperature was a pleasant +15 Celsius, a group of mountain bluebirds rose from the low pines, and the nearby creek was running freely: it might not look much like spring yet in the photo, but it definitely felt like a possibility.
Even in Montana, where we crossed the continental divide without a problem on Thursday morning although a brief winter storm had gone through during the night, the weather was fine, and the sun shone from a deep blue sky for much of the day.
We drove farther than most days, eager to cross the border and get closer to home. It's a strange and sad phenomenon that once it gets close to the end of a journey it is hard to focus on anything else along the way.
We stopped at the last rest area before the border crossing in Sweetgrass, Montana to eat our oranges, just in case they were on the 'forbidden food' list (though I believe this is only a concern when entering the United States to keep their own citrus crops free of disease etc.). The wind had been blowing hard all day, sometimes so much that I had to have a really firm grip on the steering wheel, and now it felt quite cold. From time to time thin veils of snow were curling away from the tires of the vehicle ahead of us like smoke, but the roads were still fine.
A trucker, also stopped at the rest area, asked us if we had heard about the huge accident up north. No, we hadn't; so far we hadn't even listened to the radio. Apparently a bad winter storm had created white-out conditions south of Edmonton, and 60 cars or more had piled up on Hwy. 2. We had read about a winter storm watch for the Westlock area, but since we wouldn't be there until sometime late Friday at the earliest we hadn't been too worried yet. This, however, sounded really bad.
Another car pulled in, encrusted with dirty snow. This family had come from Edmonton and circumvented the accident scene. The accident had occured around noon, and Highway 2 would stay closed well into the evening. They assured us that the roads were fine until about Red Deer.
Good! We would find accomodation somewhere south of Lethbridge, then, and hope that conditions improved on Friday further north as well.
The border official was much less amiable than his American colleagues had been on the way south, but we were quickly sent on our way. We were back on Canadian soil, but here as in many cases the border is only an imaginary line: the landscape is the same in the very southern part of Alberta and the northern part of Montana we had just passed through.
It was snowing a little again, and the sun had disappeared behind the horizon. We watched for 'Motel' signs in the little towns through which Highway 4 led us, but obviously they were not sought out by weary travellers. The only place we found was a downtown hotel-cum-bar in one of them, and I vetoed that idea, even if it might have turned into a nice story.
Instead - after facing one more disappointment when we didn't find a single motel in the sizeable town of Coaldale where we arrived after a stretch of snowy roads and poor visibility - we spent the last hotel night of our journey at the 'Comfort Inn' on the outskirts of Lethbridge, as clean, quiet and unadventurous as it could get. Not even the crowd of young hockey players occupying most of the rest of the rooms interrupted our sleep.
Saturday greeted us with sunshine and a newly white landscape. We were going to take our time, stopping twice along the way to see friends. There was no hurry for us to get home: the snow storm had left roads in very poor condition in the Westlock area, and we got reports of people being snowed in or barely able to get home. We didn't want to tackle the five kilometres of gravel road from Busby late at night if we weren't sure they had been plowed: we have got stuck there before, and with a car full of travel gear - but no snow shovel, and not even high boots - we were ill equipped to face that kind of late-night adventure. We spent the night at friends not far from Wetaskiwin, just south of the scene of that awful accident.
In the end, however, there was no more evading the facts: if we wanted to return home we would have to deal with winter one more time.
The first two miles of gravel road north of Busby had been cleared when we got there around noon, but for the last mile we just stayed in the twin tracks made by vehicles that had braved the road ahead of us, snow scraping the belly of our little Toyota. The wind had beautifully sculpted snow drifts especially on the west side of the road, much higher than the car - and much higher than when we left three weeks ago!
Whatever made us return to these conditions? Maybe we should have stayed a bit longer ...
But there is Leo, overjoyed at the sight of us, hurling himself into our arms, there is a new granddaughter to enjoy, and there is the sun setting over the quiet, familiar landscape.
Surely spring will arrive here, too, eventually.
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I will close this blog for now - until the next journey. In the meantime I will again do my musings from the farm, where, after all, I belong.
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