There’s a spot on the road I’ve never forgotten.
I didn’t give scenery much time when I lived in Kamloops from 1996 to 2003. I had grown up in what I thought was the most beautiful place in the world.
And I missed it.
Who wouldn’t?
You get to see stuff like this:
Those were taken last summer when my two beloveds and I drove across the continent so Shep and My American could meet my family in Nova Scotia.
Four months later, I learned I was moving back to Kamloops, after almost 10 years in Calgary.
I thought of that one spot.
I had been in Savona or Cache Creek or somewhere on assignment. Just south of Savona, the Trans-Canada Highway winds its way up a hill over looking Kamloops Lake.
While I was speeding along in my gutsy little Ford Mustang, I noted how beautiful that one piece of scenery was.
Maybe it was the blue of the water, channelling thoughts of my Atlantic Ocean.
Or maybe it was the wide-open freedom I felt that day.
But I remembered that spot clear as the water and I pledged to go back and take a picture that I thought did it justice.
On Saturday, I learned it’s a spot called Six Mile Hill. The grasslands below and on the other side of the highway are protected by BC Parks.
A sign tells a story of steamboats: “stately paddlewheelers, helping exploration and settlement of the Interior.”
The boats carried gold-seekers for the Big Bend rush of 1865-65 as well as grain from the Okanagan.
“They were vital in building the CPR and doomed by the railway they helped to build.”
I stood with Shep’s leash and a mapbook in one hand, my camera in the other. I took in as much as I could, soaking in the sight and knowing I would remember this day as well as the time I sped past.