The bus ride to Whitehorse included two of the most excruciating days ever. We left Vancouver at about 9 am Monday morning and ate all of our cheese sticks and pizza buns within the first two hours… which was supposed to last us two days. Being vegetarians and driving through the most remote towns in northern British Columbia really isn’t a combination that mixes very well… I have one word for you: bagels. We must have had about 4 bagels a day during the entire trip – but it was either bagels or moose stew. We did have some pretty raunchy grilled cheese, a few donuts, a gazillion coffees and a poor mans veggie sandwich (CLT). I felt like a stalk of greasy wheat for two days.
It took a while for the people on the bus to warm up to each other but eventually it was a party. The first bus we rode included an entire family of aboriginal people going back to Terrace from the Sun Run in Vancouver. Honestly, they filled the entire bus. They were quite the characters, too… incredibly loud, jolly people who were constantly laughing and making jokes at each other. It wasn’t long before they exhausted themselves and PTFO’d* for the rest of the ride to Prince George. We were left to entertain the children. We started an animal scavenger hunt – the first group to see twenty different kinds of animal’s wins.
They won.
We also met a bunch of people on the bus the first day who were going to work at Westmark in Dawson City (6 hours Northwest of Whitehorse), but none who were going to work with us. One of them, Connor from Calgary, was our buddy the entire trip and we got to know him quite well… he was a very cool person and we may just visit him on one of our days off.
The first day consisted of driving through the Fraser Valley, which we thought by far would be the most beautiful scenery we’d see but we were highly mistaken after we hopped on the Alaska highway after leaving Dawson Creek. It was gorgeous, but I’m not going to talk about that yet.
Our first transfer was in Prince George, BC at about 8:00 pm. This is where we parted ways with the aboriginal family (sad and happy moment). It was a 3 hour layover and we had some time to waste, so Aaron, Connor and myself decided to get some good eats. On the way we were approached by a man who asked us to “raise propane” (get money for gas) because he was in another province, stranded because his car was out of fuel, had everything stolen from him and needed to get out of there. Connor went to the bank with him to get money out and Aaron and I were too sketched out to believe his story so we went to eat. Connor came back and it turned out that the guy might not have been lying and we were too skeptical to offer a helping hand. I feel terrible for this and I truly believe what goes around comes around and Connor will definitely run into luck in the near future for his actions.
After dinner we went to Second Cup to get some coffee and that is where we met Betty, a schizophrenic, bi-polar ex-beauty queen who writes incredible poetry. She was HILARIOUS! She was wearing a red velvet fedora with fake pigtails attached to it and randomly sang out show tunes at times and had a very heavy smokers lung, which initiated great hilarity for the three of us. Her poetry was incredible though and it was amazing to see that the philosophy she put behind her words was quite like what I put in my poetry. The themes were based a lot on technology and our growing disconnection with nature and all three of us could emphasize. It was a fresh of breath air.
After we left we hopped back on the bus, had a terrible sleep and woke up in Dawson Creek.
Day 2 was by far the best day ever and I will post about it soon.
* Abbreviation for "Passing the Food Out" ;)
Nikki
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