2005/07 Alaska Trip - North to Alaska - Chilliwack |
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July 2005
In Part 1 of the Alaska 2005 story, Sandie and I had traveled out to Chilliwack with the truck and trailer, and were camped out at Bob and Pat’s with Karen, Stewart, and Evan. Bob had just taken delivery of a new Hyundai Santa Fe and, eager to try it out, had volunteered to collect John and Edna from Vancouver Airport the next day.
Thursday July 7th
After a day and a half of rain, we had a fine run down to the airport. John and Edna arrived in good time after a very long flight on Singapore Airlines, via Singapore and Seoul, South Korea. It had looked to them like a good deal, but the extra airport taxes for those stops adds up. In Singapore, they’d been sat next to an Indian passenger who’d begun the flight entirely covered by a blanket but after umpteen whiskies, he’d blossomed into a great friend, and then finally he became family, convinced they were his parents. Edna was eventually evacuated to first class, but John stuck by his new son, even when he had to be picked up from the aisle.
They were pleased to be off the plane and seeing sunshine, but John pointed out that the temperature was about the same as it was in Melbourne, and it was winter there! Bob took us back via Aldergrove’s Zero Avenue, a road which runs directly along the border, with the north side in Canada and the south side in the USA. What we didn’t realize at the time was that there was a smugglers’ tunnel running under that road. The border police apparently already knew about it and had allowed the smugglers to finish their tunnel and install lighting and ventilation before nabbing the first people to use it.
We had filled the front end of the trailer with toys on the way out, including Evan’s birthday presents from the kids, and our remaining boxes of toys including a million dollars worth of Lego. Evan had a great time playing with ancient toys such as a 1980’s Mr Potato Head. We had just moved all this
stuff out to Karen’s car so that John and Edna could get to their bed, but they insisted on staying up and beating the jet lag. They were rewarded with a midnight visit from a family of raccoons, who were checking out Bob and Pat’s trees.
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Chilliwack's raccoons |
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They weren’t so happy with the trains running past the house though. After a week of listening to train traffic we could mostly ignore the noise and the earthquakes, but John and Edna had a disturbed night.