Prince George layover

We made it back to Prince George and I feel like the "adventure" part of our vacation is over. There will be no more desolate roads or northern lights. The Yukon is far behind us, and the drive ahead is familiar. Ah well, there's always Mexico.

We put the truck in the shop to have the part we've been needing installed, but it turned out that they can't do it. They're scared of breaking another part while taking the broken one out, and they don't have any extras of the other part in stock. We'll have to get the truck fixed in Victoria. Annoying!

While in Prince George, Mark's brother, who is a professor of physics at the University of Northern BC, gave us a tour of the campus. It's a nice university with beautiful wooden buildings and a sweeping view of the mountains and the town below. Here's a picture of the whiteboard in his office, which shows a lot of fancy physics stuff relating to a "quantum eraser". Um. Yeah. I have my degree already but this makes me feel stupid anyway.


Other than that, we pretty much chilled out in PG most of the time. Mark has a lot of family in this town so we visited with people, and we got to spend time with the niece and nephew. They're quite young and insanely active so we went to bed exhausted every night.

Mark's brother and his wife made awesome dinners every night we were there - home-made fish & chips, seafood portofino, and other spectacular dishes were in abundance. We also had some very good Indian food for lunch with Mark's dad's girlfriend one day. She was thrilled to be able to take us there - every other family member in town seemed to be stuck firmly in the middle of their "white-people food" comfort zone, thinking of ethnic food as scary. Although, to be fair, we took Mark's brother & his family out for sushi and his wife, who'd never had it before, ended up LOVING it! Mark's brother liked it too but has been to Japan, so sushi was not new to him. Look how cute our niece looks with chopsticks!


So basically in Prince George we've been bums, taking a break from the road. It's been fun visiting family, fun seeing the foster kittens in the house we were staying at, and fun just doing not too much of anything.

Tomorrow, which is Friday, we will be back on the road again for the last leg of our trip. In a small change of plans we're making a quick stop at the Williams Lake SPCA to pick up some kittens that will be transferred to Victoria for adoption. Williams Lake is a small town with a small shelter and they just don't have a lot of adoptions. On the phone the staff member told me that recently she went two weeks with only one kitten adoption. Wow! So we'll get five out of there and camp with the two dogs and five kittens tomorrow night. Is that crazy? Maybe. We'll see. Wish us luck!