Tourist On A Road Trip

Road trip day!

Yesterday evening while spending a couple of hours with John Cleese and 1,500 of his closest friends, my friend Mike asked me what I was doing today, this being Monday and all. I replied "nothing really", knowing full well that a complete basket of laundry was standing in the corner of my bedroom pleading for attention, yearning to be cleaned. Yet I said "Nothing".

So he asked if I wanted to go for a drive to Radium with him this morning, as he was headed there for work and knew I wanted to get out for a bit of a drive, to go up into the mountains. The drive from Calgary to Radium is about three hours through some of the most rugged and beautiful of the Rocky Mountains, up the Bow River Valley, past Banff and Lake Louise, through the Kootenay River gap. Radium itself is simply a small village with the most incredible hot springs, a couple of motels and some pretty amazing scenery.

"Laundry be damned", I though to myself, "this is a day to get into the mountains." I love the mountains. I love the sea too, and the prairie. In fact I love being outdoors, or at least seeing the outdoors, from pretty much every angle in this amazing country in which I get to live. This is a land of sweeping vistas and diametric differences, glued together by a common desire of its people to not get in each other's way, to respect the space and distance that we all need to get along.

Today I will be a passenger, riding along with Mike. There will be no requirement for me to watch traffic or be ready for rock falls or ice or snow, or even the odd grizzly bear or elk or moose or deer. Today I get to sit back and watch the scenery go by, to contemplate this land, rich in flora and fauna, a wealth of life clinging to the sides of these massive mountains. Today I get to be tourist, on a road trip.