Fort St. John

fort st. john is the third city we travelled to. it rains a lot in fort st. john. maybe just in may. but may is when we were there, so there was a lot of rain. which is perfectly fine by me--i quite like the rain. it was when it started snowing that it disturbed me a tiny bit. it was may, after all. and i am from the desert, after all.

so in fort st. john, amidst the rain, my sister finally came to canada. i was t h r i l l e d. i love my megan. we were in fort. st. john for almost two weeks and while we were there, there was an intense egg tossing competition in the park (which we won). there was a pizza party, there was a trip to the movies to see avengers. (did any of you see that movie? sooo good). and like i said, there was rain.

apparently fort st. john is one of the best places in north america to see the northern lights, except we weren't there when that was happening. it is also the oldest settlement in british columbia. fun fact, i know. fort st. john has been nick-named "the energetic city." so while we were there i began to wonder...how does a city get that nick-name? i couldn't see why this city would be anymore energetic than  any other city. but i guess i don't know much about energy in the cities.

what i do know, is that their mall closed at 5:30! and that nothing was open past about 7 pm. maybe that is why it is so energetic? who really knows. in fort st. john i started to really get a hang of the canadian lingo. a bathroom is called the washroom here, and if you say bathroom it gives you right away as being an american. also, they say "zed" for the letter z, instead of "zee." weird. they have a dish called poutine (fries with cheese curds and gravy). their dollars are coins and they are called loonies, and they have a two dollar coin called a toonie. also, they say, "hey" or "eh" after just about anything that could possibly be an interrogative sentence. it's actually pretty catchy, because i pretty much say it all the time now and i don't even try to.

so that was fort st. john. a medium sized city with a lot of guys who work out at "the patch" (the oil fields). can't say i miss it, but it was fun while it lasted, eh?

there was also a disproportionate amount of jacked up trucks there.

i'm not kidding. there were thousands.

i just want the whole enchilada, ya know?

so, my mom is from colombia and that means that she is a good cook, obviously. now that might have sounded like i meant she was a good cook because she was from colombia. nope. she's a good cook because after she moved to california when she was sixteen she helped my grandpa run his mexican restaurant. that's why.

i really, really like mexican food. i grew up with every and any type of arepa, tostada, enchilada, burrito, taco, or emanada you can imagine. and i loved it. some saturdays, actually most saturdays i woke up to my dad's voice calling, "AREPAS!! AREPAS CON JUEVOS!!" (this was one of the few things that could get me out of bed in the mornings).

now, me loving mexican food is all fine and good, but i know you are thinking, what does this have to do with anything? well i'll tell you what it has to do with what. there is no mexican food in canada, people. that's right. now, when i say no mexican food, i mean no good mexican food. they don't even sell corn tortillas at the store(!). they don't even sell canned green chilies at the store(!!!). i might be dying, slowly.

so we have been grilling a lot of hamburgers, and eating a lot of sandwiches. and i feel so canadian. because let's face it, americans know about good mexican food, and trust me, there is none up here. also, can i mention that i have not even seen ONE mexican restaurant up here. nope. not even one.

but on the plus side, as soon as we get back to the us of a and i can make the deliciousnes aforementioned in this post, my husband will wonder if i took secret cooking classes behind his back, because let's face it, i just really want to make enchiladas, and so, i don't make anything else, ya know?

canadians don't know what their missing, i tell ya.

Hudson's Hope

after prince george we headed north towards fort st. john, but stopped in a place called hudson's hope for a little while. we were only here for a couple of days but i don't remember a whole bunch because i was still adjusting to my new gypsy life. it was quite the experience, though. it is a very small town, but it is a very important one in bc. you'll see why.

this place you guys. i don't even know what to say. when you pull into town you are greeted by a sign that says, "welcome to hudson's hope. land of dinosaurs and dams." there were about 1,500 people in this town and one giant dam. the bennett dam is what it is called and it is one of the largest earth-filled structures in the world weighing in at 100 million tons. it supplies about 25% of all the electricity for the whole province of british columbia!! insane.

so like i said, i don't remember a ton about the place, but what i do remember is that there is a HUGE gorge on one side of town and a really big mountain on the other. all day you could hear the "brraaapp" "brraaapp" of dirt bikes all over that place, and we stayed in the ritz of rv parks. fareal. it was sooo nice.

this was by someone's front door. made me smile.

the peace river is the reason for the giant gorge and it was b-e-a-u-tiful.  and also huge. i can see why so much power is generated there. (yay for hydro-electricity!) everywhere you looked there were trees and mountains and then the huge canyon... i really loved it. plus it was a small town so it already had a dear place in my heart.

the owners of the rv park we camped at were supper nice and even tried to sell us the place. we had to pass because we didn't have an extra $795,000 dollars laying around. i thought it was a little steep for a town so small, but hey, that's just me. they weren't the only nice people in that place though. it seemed most everyone i met was extremely kind. one old man even gave us some moose sausage as i explained to him i had never had the privilege of eating moose yet. so kind, i know.

so that was hudson's hope. a brief but pleasant encounter, i'd say.

see, i told you.

Prince George

once upon a time, after sam and i got married we drove 1,372 miles from our hometown in idaho to prince george, british columbia. in tow we had a bumper-pull travel trailer, high-hopes, and not enough cooking supplies. we headed up to canada for sam's job, and now that we're up here realize it is pretty hard to communicate with people in america. you know, international talk time and things like that. so here we are on this here blog, and by we i am hoping you know i mean me. as in keisha.

now prince george. this was the first place we went on our trip around bc and let me just tell you something about this city. first of all i think it is unfair for the entire province of british columbia to have license plates that read, "beautiful british columbia" and have a motto of, "the best place on earth." you see, we drove up through the best place on earth and it kind of stopped being that right about...oh yes, at prince george. now, don't get me wrong. i am a super fan of this province, but northern bc just lacks the grandeur to bear the title of  "the best place on earth," and it makes you want to 'x-out the beautiful on everyone's license plates.

i don't know about you, but if a place claims to be the best place on earth, i am certain that it would not include prince george. also, don't trust google. i just googled pictures of it to see if it would back me up, but of course they only put pictures of the surrounding areas of the city, which duh, are going to be beautiful, after all we are in british columbia. all i'm saying is maybe they should just make prince george a sovereign nation within a nation and be done with it. especially since it has the highest crime rate per capita in all of canada. now doesn't that just make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. okay, enough on that.

so like i was saying, prince george. it's pretty ugly. but despite that, while we were there we got to stay in a hotel (or rather the parking lot of a hotel) with a jungle in it. yep, a jungle. i know(!), weirdest thing ever. but it was weirdly cool. one thing about canada is that the winters are so long almost every motel has a water slide in it. fun right? i mean like even the super 8's and such--indoor waterslides; and i know what you're thinking because my mind was blown too. it's kind of like if you went to a mcdonald's and someone seated you and served you on a real plate with real silverware. it's just crazy.

sam and i enjoyed a lot of morning runs together there, something that stopped very soon after we left that place. and one thing that i did enjoy was the costco. oh how i miss having a costco nearby. only don't be confused, costcos in canada are hardly the same as they are in "the states" as they call america here. everything is about twice as expensive, if not more, and the biggest bummer...the very berry yogurt sundae is 24 cents more and about 1/4 of the size. i was extremely disappointed. but don't even get me started on the prices of things up here in canada.

another bright spot in the experience we *cough* enjoyed *cough* in this city was a place called 2 for 1 pizza. i hope you are not mislead by the name, the pizzas were not actually 2 for the price of 1 (i know, it can be very misleading can't it). the plus side of this place was that the owners were very nice and always remembered our names and also let us use their bathroom (or washroom as the canucks like to say) even though we never ate there. and they also gave me a free pizza...even though we never bought anything there. and yes, i did feel extremely lucky if you were wondering, especially since they don't even do the bogo deal that their name implies. don't worry, i was confused too.

yes, so that was prince george. it was very cold. it was very ugly. and it was very expensive. but the people at the ymca were nice and let us in for free all week. score. also there were jerry and the boys, but that is a story for another time. and as you can see there are no pictures in this post because why would i waste my time taking pictures of the armpit of bc, that's what i want to know.