Conquering the Pacific Northwest: Driving the Last Spike

Rising early from Golden we set out for Merritt, where the three of us would rendezvous with my mother. Continuing the trend, we stopped at A&W for breakfast and began to geocache. Near Revelstoke we were going to seek a cache near a recently abandoned building. After successfully crossing the highway, Chris and I had to slink down an embankment. Chris made it gracefully, as he was about to warn me of some holes to be careful for, there was a loud thud. This noise was the wind being knocked out of me as my chest made contact with the ground. Ouch. After brushing myself off we successfully found the geocache, but it put a little damper on my excitement for further caching for the day.

The attraction that could not be sacrificed was visiting Craigellachie. The last spike of the Canadian Pacific Railroad was driven HERE. At locations like this there is an undeniable feeling of pride and accomplishment. Here is where people overcame geography, human challenges, political powers, and financial willingness to create something BIG. The feeling, I’m sure, is similar where the equivalent last spike was driven in Utah for the first transcontinental railroad in North America (one day I would love to visit). Sites like this make me feel good about being involved with civil engineering.

The focus was now on forward movement, though it was easy to forget this was the fastest route with the impressive views of Shushwap Lake from the Trans-Canada. Here I thought Lake Okanagan would be the crown jewel of the day. We continued forth to Vernon, where we stopped for lunch, and into Kelowna.

When I was young I visited Kelowna a few times. It looked like a small city with pretty well defined boundaries. The area around the City Park on Lake Okanagan was built up but was nothing too special. Mount Adams seemed a little removed from the rest of the town. This is not the Kelowna we arrived in! The sprawl was impressive and having not visited in several years, without referring to a map, I would have never believed this to be Kelowna, the pleasant little retiree village on the banks of the lake! Of course, another consequence of urbanization is traffic. We did some hard time stuck in traffic in the suburb of Westbank. Traffic was a concept we had all but forgotten since leaving Seattle.

The widened Highway 97C from Kelowna to Merritt still looked familiar. Even though I had not seen these perfect ranch lands in years, I knew this land. Without fear of missing anything, Chris and I each dosed as dad took us into Merritt. Merritt is a city that has changed little over the years, but the hill or “bench” has, this is where the Wal-Mart is! Growth on the bench has been fueled by the situation of numerous hotels and restaurants to serve travelers off of the Coquihalla Highway. In this sense, Merritt and Golden share a lot in common.

We settled into our hotel and picked up my mother. For dinner there was nowhere else to take Chris for dinner than the Coldwater Hotel, named for a nearby river, the Coldwater is an establishment. The copper turret atop the hotel can be seen for miles, it is how you know you’ve arrived in Merritt. Inside, the bar and restaurant have an unmistakable frontier or "wild west" feeling. Afterward my mother gave us a lifetime’s worth of memories in a guided tour of this small town, the crossroads of British Columbia ranching. We capped off the tour with a visit to my maternal grandmother’s grave. Off to one edge of the bench, past residents of Merritt silently watch over the town that was once their own from the cemetery.

There was only one day left on the road. We began in my mother’s home town and would end in my own. Rather than venture on the newer, four-lane (and recently paid off!) Coquihalla Highway, we would travel to Spence’s Bridge and follow the Trans-Canada Highway through the inhospitable, yet well-traveled, Fraser Canyon.