On the road again

 

I've been asking myself the same question as last year when we left for our trip south to the US: why are we leaving here now? Car packed to the gills, we started out early this afternoon, not to return until the end of the month that has just barely started. This time there are three of us for the first half of the trip: our friend Dorothee from Germany is joining us for some hiking and sightseeing.

Water was running off the roof – another five-gallon pail filled from the spout, so there should be enough to water the house plants until spring truly arrives – and the snow sparkled in the sun when we took to the road at 1:30 this afternoon. For the first two days it will be quite a bit of driving, with little chance to stretch our legs: a six and a half hour drive to Cardston today, and more than that tomorrow to Salmon, Idaho.

Strong winds had blown wet snow into our lane in open areas for the first hour or so, which made it necessary to slow down and manoeuver carefully at times, but after that the road was dry, and we made good progress. It cooled down somewhat from the sunny +5 at home when skies clouded over further south, and the wind, though still pretty strong, calmed down a bit between Edmonton and south of Calgary. Then, it doubled its efforts to make it harder for our Subie to keep the low mileage from the first part of the trip. It was a beautiful night, though: from my vantage point on the right back seat I had a great view of the celestial spectacle that is happening right now, the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. A few days ago I noticed how close they were together on my evening walk on the Wabash creek. At that time, Jupiter was sitting a bit above brighter Venus. Now, Jupiter is below Venus, but still very close. Since it was cloudy last night I missed seeing them side by side.

Cardston doesn't have a huge choice of hotels; in fact, there are only two. We decided on the South Country Inn, marked as 'pleasant' in the reviews. Our first impression fell a bit short of pleasant: one of the beds obviously hadn't been made, and the waste paper basket was full. We have been upgraded and now can enjoy clean beds and, hopefully, a restful night. We are only about 15 km from the US border and hope to cross it without much delay tomorrow morning.