The first part of my recent road trip to Kimberley, BC was well-known and humdrum. The real trip started when I got on to Highway 3, in Osoyoos. My trip could be envisioned as a 650 kilometer long staple, with the first leg being the Summerland-to-Osoyoos portion. The real trip started when I connected with the broad part of the staple–Highway 3, heading east from Osoyoos. 

Heading up the Anarchist, the longest uphill highway climb in all of Canada, I salute the magnificent bronze Sasquatch sculpture. Then over the Anarchist summit (1140 meters) and down past the village of Bridesville to Rock Creek. There I pass the Prospector Pub, on the banks of the Kettle River. Continuously operating since 1895, the Pub has a balcony overlooking the Kettle, where my birding friends tell me they can add to their life lists while drinking beer. Then on to Midway. I knew this would be a long drive, but now I realized it would also be a trip about memories. I worked in the Boundary and East Kootenay regions in the 1990’s, and had not been back since. Passing through Midway, I gazed up at a ravine known as Murray Gulch, where I spent many long hours assessing rangeland grasses. Next comes Greenwood: lovely Victorian architecture, good coffee shops, and the set for the 1999 film Snow Falling on Cedars. Then a winding ascent over the Eholt Summit (1000m) and then, winding again, down to Grand Forks, with its massive red Jesus billboards. Cross the bridge just upstream of the junction of the Granby and the Kettle, two rivers that caused the massive 2018 Grand Forks flood, largely due to clearcutting in their respective headwaters. Pass by the recently renovated Johnny’s Motel, a series of cabins right on the banks of the Granby, where our young children had their first fishing experiences many decades ago. Just east of Grand forks is the Gilpin, another grassland area I know in great detail. The Gilpin was infamous for its protracted land management disputes, but it has now settled down as a Provincial Park. Onward to Christina Lake, where Nicola Tesla lived briefly, in 1897. This little town is also famous for a 2012 incident involving bears, dog food and a marijuana plantation. Then over the Paulson Bridge where, on a nighttime trip, I saw a once-in-a-lifetime meteorite fall. Up the winding Blueberry-Paulson Pass, where a a small herd of elk could occasionally be seen. Summitting at 1535 meters, I start winding down towards Castlegar. Somehow this part of BC strongly recommends north-south travel, instead of east-west. Now I am entering a subtly different climate regime: open, patchy forests are giving way to closed forests. 

Starting up the Bombi Pass I look back at the Castlegar Airport, so notorious for fogging-in that locals refer to it as the “Cancelgar Airport.” A short trip over the Bombi (1235m) and I descend into Salmo. More West Kootenay parlance: those men’s red and black plaid wool jackets are referred to locally as “Salmo Dinner Jackets.” 

Then up and over the Salmo-Creston (aka Kootenay Pass). At 1775m, it is BC’s highest highway pass. I begin to wonder, on this eastward journey, about how much actual north and south I am doing. Perhaps there is a Highway 3 algorithm that tells me for every eastward kilometer I achieve, I must first go 0.324km north, 0.287km south, 32m up and then 29m down. If I think of my trip as a staple, with Summerland at one end and Kimberley at the other, the two legs of the staple are fairly sober and straight, but this broad base of the staple is curvaceously inebriated.

East of Creston the Highway follows the Goat River for a time. A man once parked his truck and camper along the banks of the Goat, and took up residence there. But a flood came up and created a new channel, so the man became an inadvertent island resident. Then there is the nearby offgrid Mormon community of Bountiful. Enough said.

The highway is 2-lane blacktop now, with no shoulders. I pass a couple of highway signs saying “Runaway Truck Xing,” which give pause for thought. The bottom line is: in a day of driving, we chance instant death a thousand times. Late afternoon I arrive at Yahk Junction, where the (very) roughly east-west Highway 3 merges with the roughly north-south Highway 95/93.  This is where I start on to the second, less inebriated leg of the staple. Years ago, as a newly fledged Forest Service dude, I shortened the front end of a brand new Forest Service halfton, when a Yahk deer bounded out from dense bush alongside the road. Another Yahk area memory: I pulled over once to look at an interesting riparian area. Climbing down a steep, shrub-covered bank, I stepped into an invisible downed woven-wire fence, tripped, and fell forward. My left foot was snugly trapped in the mesh, and it took a full ten minutes of agonizing twists and turns to free it.

Looking back on the trip so far, it is remarkable the number of border crossings that peel off from this section of Highway 3. Midway, Carson, Laurier, Frontier, Waneta, Nelway, Rykerts and Kingsgate: they all cross from rural Canada to backwoods America. 

Next is Moyie, a tiny old railway town located on a steep sidehill above a lake. The town’s ancient graveyard is perched right next to the highway. I am belatedly noticing a consistent feature in these small rural communities: every one of them has a pot shop. They all have low-rent RV campgrounds, mostly for itinerant folks who are not tourists in the conventional sense. These little towns also typically have a no-name mom and pop gas station, a combination junkyard/car repair, and an idled sawmill.

Rounding a bend, there is the sudden appearance of the Rocky Mountains: a massive snowcapped phalanx of rock soldiers. .As I enter Cranbrook, the town appears as a vast urban metropolis compared to the communities I have already passed through. Gas stations, car lots, car washes and fast food joints stretch on for kilometers. At one point I pass the Apollo, the iconic Greek restaurant that I frequented with my cronies in the 1990s. We jokingly called it “the Appalling,” but you could get a decent meal and a beer there at pretty much any time of day or night. 

Then a turnoff onto 95A, passing through Wycliffe, Marysville, Kimberley and finally, after 650 winding kilometers I arrive at my final destination: the Kimberley Alpine Resort (1230m). As a former hitchhiker myself, I carry a lingering regret: I passed two on this trip, and did not stop for them. But life moves on, and here I am, privileged to attend a grassland conference hosted by the Columbia Mountains Institute of Applied Ecology. Well worth the memory-laden trip on the drunken staple.