Bowron Lake Provincial Park is located in the Cariboo Mountains of northern British Columbia. The park is known for its rugged glaciated mountains, cold deep lakes, waterfalls, and abundant wildlife. The park’s main attraction is a 72 mile canoe circuit, which follows lakes, rivers, with short portages between waterways. This trip takes about a week to complete. In June of 2000, when he was 15, Dan accompanied his relatives, Robin, who was also 15, Aimeé, Robin’s mother and Anne’s cousin and Betty, Aimeé’s mother and Anne’s aunt. They had graciously invited Dan on this their great adventure.
This is really Danny’s story, but I’ll tell it anyway. I had another post in mind for tonight, a rant, but the bombings in Boston made that post seem irrelevant. I first thought of writing about the bombings and began pawing through our photo archive for some relevant photograph of Boston. Instead I found these pictures that Dan had taken while at Bowron. The world will not miss nor long remember what I might have written about today’s bombings. Think of this retrospective as a much needed diversion from the 24/7 babble that is on all the other media outlets, besides it dovetails with this morning’s post.
Dan’s adventure began before he ever left Saint Louis. Fog had socked in the airport the night before, so chaos ruled at Lambert the morning of his departure. TWA had already rescheduled his departure on a later direct flight to Seattle, but this change wouldn’t work for us. Dan had to land early enough so that Aimeé and company could catch the last ferry back to Lopez Island for the night. While we were waiting in line, I called the airline’s 800 phone number. I explained our situation and they were willing to book a flight on another airline. The problem now was that instead of a direct flight, Dan had a connecting flight through O’Hare. I’ve done plenty of OJ runs through O’Hare, so with some trepidation we bade him farewell. As it turned out, his connection was at the adjoining gate.
The Google map shows the Bowron waterways as a near perfect parallelogram. The tour was well guided and outfitted and Dan had a great time. A couple of stories came out of this trip. The first one was Dan’s; there was a tailwind down a long lake. Robin and Dan rigged a sail with their paddles as twin masts and a tarp as their sail. They glided effortlessly past their party with the wind at their back. The other story was about Dan. He had the habit of leaving things behind. Robin and Dan had to more than once retrace their course, always accompanied by guides. The tour guides decided to teach him a lesson. In the end, Dan found his luggage sealed with duct tape.