The mouse ran up the clock

Then Em fell down and broke her crown

Whistler, Dickery, Dock

Jay and Em went to Starbucks in the morning for some more internet research and planning. Em decided that she is about ready to end this trip for herself. She and Jay talked the options over. Em was willing to rent a car and head down to Colorado solo, but Jay preferred for us to stay together through to the bitter end. So we came to the deal of two more weeks to explore the national parks in Canada, and then heading on back to Colorado after that. So we left the Starbucks and drove north on Hwy 99 toward Whistler Canada, a famous ski resort that hosted the Winter Olympics in 2010. The town and most of the highway is located in the Coastal Range of mountains. Jay pulled over at a short hike for Brandywine Falls. While the falls were beautiful, we’ve seen so many beautiful things in nature its starting not to register anymore for either of us.

In town we stopped at a walk called the train wreck, where a train wrecked years ago and they didn’t clean it up. Now it’s a canvas for graffiti artists. But we didn’t even make it to the train wreck before turning back because it was farther than we thought, and we didn’t know how far. Instead we went to the Whistler Brewery for a grapefruit ale which was a nice beer for a hot summer day. And that was it, we found a place to camp on a British Columbia forest service road. We had to cross the suspect rotten-wood topped bridge (pictured below) before we found a spot amongst the railroad tracks to take showers, cook dinner, and sleep.

As we were laying in the dark drifting off to sleep, Em felt something crawl over the top of her arm. She squealed a little and jumped up, startling Jay awake. He turned on the lights right away, and we looked around the van and in the bed sheets for any culprits and found nothing. Jay said, “There are some little small bugs up at the lights.” Em said, “No it was definitely not a small little bug. Possibly it could have been like a huge moth flapping its wings on me, but not a little bug like that.” We couldn’t find any moths or any signs of anything else. Em knew she had been wide awake and not imagined it, but she told herself maybe it was just something fluky and we went back to sleep. Or maybe she was just losing her mind.

The next day we kept heading north and stopped at Nairin Falls quickly. Em didn’t even consider doing the hike, and Jay was ambivalent. He debated with himself about whether or not it was worth it for about five minutes after pulling into the parking lot. Em was no help, telling him it was fine with her either way. Ultimately he decided he couldn’t pass it up in case it was the most awesome waterfall ever, so he went to Brandywine falls. Jay did the 1.5 km one way to see the falls which was cool. He had to drag Hoggle the whole way there for some reason. This was a walk-in-the-park for him. Though people kept saying “he doesn’t want to walk” in a judgmental you’re-a-bad-dog-owner tone. No, he’s just being stubborn because his mom is back in the van. Though at the waterfall two little girls liked him so much they wanted a picture with him. Hoggle should be a Hollywood movie star. When Jay got back Em asked how it was, he said, “Eh. Pretty.”

But the main attraction for the day was Joffry Lakes. We parked the van at the crowded trailhead, in the shade. Em went to the lower lake that was only a 1/2 km away (pictured to the right), but was not interested in doing the 6km (3.7 miles) one way hike up the steep valley to see more lakes. All of the lakes were a beautiful teal blue characteristic of most, if not all, glacier fed Canadian Rocky lakes. In the bright sunlight it was even more so. It gets that color for the dissolved grains of rock in the water that the glacier grinds off the mountain on its trek downhill.

After the first lake it was a very steep hike up to the middle lake. Jay huffed it there and found another teal blue lake with the glaciers and the mountain peaks even closer in the background (Picture below). Onward around the lake a little upward the final Joffry lake is reached, with the glaciated mountain towering above the lake surface. It reminded Jay a little of the Rob Roy Glacier Trek where Em and Jay got married, but instead of a wildflower meadow there was a teal blue lake (pictured bottom left). It was quite stunning.

But as Jay was taking some of this last photos (at least it was good timing) the mirror on his NIkon D7000, really expensive camera, decided to stop working. It was stuck in the up position and displayed an “Err” code on the LCD screen. What the hell? This is the second problem he’s had with this camera, the first was repaired under warranty. Jay won’t be so lucky this time. He expects much more from Nikon, and for anything that costs that much. It’s only a couple of years old. Jay’s dad has NIkons decades old that still function perfectly. Jay’s older d40 that he got back in College still works great, even though he dropped it from waist height on to bare granite on the top of Blood Mountain, GA. Luckily Jay brought that old d40 with him so he has another camera to take pictures.

And on the way down Jay was still feeling soreness in his left knee that he’s had since backpacking in the North Cascades about a week ago. But it wasn’t too bad. And with trekking poles it’s not a big deal.

When Jay got back to the parking lot the van was locked and Em was gone. ????? So as he was walking toward the first lake where he thought she might be she appeared. How lucky. We all went back to the first lake because Jay wanted to swim to get all the sweat off. Hoggle did not want to go down to the lake again. But Jay carried him half way until he figured he did want to go.

When we got there Jay found as Em had said that the water, at least on the shore, was not too cold. As Jay was taking off his shirt and shoes the folks next to us seem amazed that he was going to get in. Little did they know we’d be jumping in cold water for months now. This was nothing.

But once Jay waded out into the deeper waters it did get colder, but not any colder than what we’d been in before. The people even watched him get in, wondering if he would actually do it.

The mouse ran up the clock…

Well, we walked back to the van and were off to find a campsite. We found a great spot on the side of the road next to a river. We made some dinner and went to bed. As we were reading in bed, we heard some pots rattling in the back. Weird. Jay went back there and checked it out, saw nothing. Then we turned off the lights and went to bed. After some time had passed Em started hearing definite noises of something moving about near her. We turned on the light to see a nasty big MOUSE crawling back into our kitchen cupboard and into the wall!!!!!!

And all of events over the past several days started making sense. The “bug” that crawled on Em’s arm in the dark the night before. All the noises in the van lately that we wrote off as the van settling as it cooled down. Hoggle freaking out at that camp spot when it was just him and Em, sticking his nose into the cabinet that this mouse this crawled into. We figured it must have hitch hiked with Jay into the van – he tent camped in a mouse infested spot about a week ago, right before we went to the North Cascades. How could a mouse be living in a van with two people and a hound dog for a week?! Hoggle!!! We are disappointed in you! Aren’t you supposed to be a rodent hunting dog??

Well there was no way we could sleep in the van until that mouse was gone. Not with it crawling all over us at night. We’re aware that living with mice crawling on you is a reality for a lot of people in bad situation, but we’re not used to it or okay with it. Em had a serious case of the heebie jeebies and jumped multiple times anytime anything touched her unexpectedly in the van (like Hoggle’s tail) as we got ready to drive off. We’ve had mice in our rental houses before. But not in such close quarters. So we started driving to the next town, Lillooet, in hopes of finding a hotel that had a vacancy. During the drive Jay commented that maybe we should just drive the van into a lake when the trip is finished, “let’s just take it up to Horsetooth Reservoir and drive it on in.” Em found this prospect hilarious and couldn’t help but giggle elatedly for about it for several minutes. We got to Lilloet and found a “cheap” motel for $100 to spend what was rest of the night. Jay didn’t mention Hoggle – probably smart – so we had to sneak him in in his stroller. We checked in around 1 AM. The room was muggy and had painted cinder block walls, which Em found comforting. No mice were going to be crawling out of those. We turned on the AC, Em took a shower to wash off and calm down her mouse heebie jeebies, and then we finally went to bed.

Em fell down and broke her crown…

We did take advantage of the hotel and took showers and washed Hoggle in the morning. We also got some lunch before heading out north. While we were packing up the van, the 2×4 bed support board was propped up horizontally between the bench seats at knee height, but the bed wasn’t set up so the aisle was still open. Em was backing up to get the stroller into the van and she didn’t expect that board to be there. It immediately took out her knees such that she flipped backwards and caught her fall with the back of her head on the van floor. It happened so fast she didn’t even have time to make a sound or even try to slow the fall. She saw stars. All Jay saw was her feet suddenly in the air. It hurt; it definitely hurt. But more than that it just got to the core of her van living weariness. Jay went to get her some ice for her head. Laying on the floor, Em decided she was officially beyond ready for this trip to be over. Done. The van life has beaten her. She was giving up, waving her white flag – surrender, surrender.

But a deal’s a deal — Jay had one week and five days left, as agreed. Jay was ready to mush onwards, motivated by his strong desire to see more of the Canadian Rockies. Jay has admitted in the past that whenever he used to play the computer game “Oregon Trail” as a kid he would always set the pace at “Grueling” and all of his oxen would always die. Things don’t seem to have changed much since then, and Em could relate to those deceased digital oxen. She pulled herself up, dusted herself off (and found that she had been lying on top of Jay’s dirty underwear on the floor – super awesome), put the ice pack on the back of her head, and climbed into the passenger seat.

We continued on our drive northwards and found a store to buy some mouse traps. Jay was started feeling under the weather, with similar symptoms to our recent sickness with the body aches and nausea and such, so Em got him some Pepto and other “feel better” type things from Walmart and took over driving (part of the two week deal was that Jay would do the driving during those two weeks, but she wasn’t going to hold him to it while sick). Em drove for a couple hours, then we found a forest service road to camp. We set up our tent, unwilling to sleep in the van. Hoggle had a good time running around free of his leash, as always. We put part of our mattress in the tent so we had a comfortable bed at least. By that night Em’s neck muscles had all tightened up from her fall earlier and were very sore. Good times. At least Jay was feeling a bit better. We set all the mouse traps in the van, hopped into the tent, and hoped for the best.

In the morning our hopes were dashed, the mouse didn’t even touch any of the peanut butter we used as bait. More tent camping in our future. We packed up and headed north until we entered Mt Robson Provincial Park. The overnight backpack Jay really wanted to do was there, but the mouse complicated the situation. We only have one tent, and Jay would need it for backpacking. So instead we decided to head on to Jasper, which is nearby, keep trying to catch the mouse, and then come back later so Jay could backpack with the tent and Em could sleep in the mouse free van while he’s gone.