...we're on a highway to Hope....

Yearning for the mountains, we decided to bundle everyone up in the car and brave the cold rainy weekend weather and head for the hills. Our mission was to find Hope. It was rumoured that Hope was a fairly pictureque place and so we thought the 2-3 hor drive might be worth it. We weren't disappointed - the scenery was great. There was fresh snow on the mountain top - you could see the lush green lanscape turning a frosty shade of white as your eyes moved higher up the mountain. It rained for most of the day, but did not snow. Hope turned out to be a pretty little town surrounded by mountains. It is the first of the mountain towns after leaving Vancouver. The summer tourist season had only been closed for a couple of weeks, so we missed going to a couple of places, such as Hell's Gate (a narrow part of the fraser River, which funnels the water through its passage with great force). Not far passed Hope was a town called Yale, which, at the hieght of the 1800's gold rush, was the largest town north of Chicago. Today the town was very small and there was little evidence of its former glory days.
Alex delighted in seeing many freight trains passing through this area. Ours was one of the few cars travelling that day. Most of the other vehicles were semi-trailers. There was a sign not far from Hope that stated that all vehicles travelling past that point would have to carry chains to wrap around their tyres in snowy times. Further up was a boom gate which closes the road if the snow is too bad. Past Yale, on the way to Hell's Gate, are a series of 7 tunnels which have to be navigated. With river to one side and steep mountains all around, going through the mountain was the only reasonable way to get from A to B. Still haven't seen any bears, and soon they will be off to hibernate for the wniter, so I guess we won't have any luck of seeing them now, until next year.