Brian had organized a weekend away for us for our anniversary (Oct. 20) he thought he would surprise me. He certainly did and I was amazed he had been able to pull it off.
Our list of “to do’s” was huge and it made no sense to go away. He truck was in pieces in the driveway, my car died the night before in the driveway, the gravel for the driveway was supposed to arrive while we were gone, we have been waiting months for it.
We went anyways. The car was fine, I am sure it was a divine intervention.
Sometimes you have to do the non-sensible activity. We had not realized how tired and how hard we have worked in the past year around this property. I truly did not realize it until last week when a friend texted me that it was a year ago that I was huddled in the holiday trailer, wearing jackets and trying to keep warm while we waited to see if we could get our home moved. Oh man, it has only been a year, but in some ways it has felt like 15.
We got in the car, drove away and then discussed where we were going. Neither of us had a clue. We had thrown around a couple of ideas but no firm decision, we left later than anticipated and the weather report sounded “ify” for snow, so we were plain not sure.
I ended up driving so I pointed us west and we went that direction. I think in our minds, we were really hoping to make it up to Liard Hot springs. It is gorgeous and one of my favorite places in the world. It is however a 9 hour journey from here. Its is not like we have not made the journey before, but because of what is there and what is not, it meant 3 days of driving. I was not feeling like that was what we needed.
We needed rest, no animals, no worrying about water, power and that driveway.
The first night we only made it to Fort St. John, it is only 1.5 hours away and you know, we enjoyed it. We went to a couple places there we would not have stopped at normally and took the time to look around.
Because we have not had a tv since we moved out here, we enjoyed watching a couple shows, headed out for supper and relaxed.
The next morning, we ended up going to Hudson Hope and were amazed at how much construction is going on for the Site C dam along the way, it really was quite fascinating. We found ourselves at the Williston Lake Resort. It is a log cabin hotel that has even been featured on tv, magnificently built.
We had lunch there and my goodness it was yummy. My Caesar salad was like none other, so I had to take a picture of it, almost a piece of art itself. We toyed with the idea of staying there for the night and sitting on the deck watching over the lake, but decided to keep looking around the area. It had started to snow a bit and our waitress was so excited. We asked her why and she pointed across the lake, she said that it was not clouds we could see on the hills, rather smoke because a forest fire had been burning there for a few months. The coming of the snow meant the fire would go out and the sky would clear.
We drove around and saw deer and a nice sized black bear, the lake is huge and it was delightful touring around it. We headed over to the WC Bennet dam and we are not sure if we should have been on it or not, but the gate was open and no one stopped us. We drove over the top of it. Brian wanted to see down to the bottom of the one side. I am not usually afraid of heights, but man, that is a long ways down, I kept asking him to stay in the middle of the roadway, away from the edge.
When we got to the other side, it did not look like the road went anywhere, that is when we wondered if we should have even been on it. We turned around and went back over it and then up to the visitor center, which is now closed for the season and a sign said it will re-open in Spring of 2023. That was disappointing.
As I was looking at the pictures I took of our adventure, I studied the deer picture. The deer is so camouflaged in the picture you can barely tell it is there. But it is, big as life, you just have to look for it. Isn’t that the way God can seem?
We think He has not showed up for our problem and yet He has, He has not only shown up, He is taking care of it, but since He moves in the spiritual world we do not always see Him there, even when He has shown up Big as Life! He has blended in or camouflaged into the scene of our life. Perhaps we have to adjust our eyes to be able to see the proper picture? (did you find the deer in the picture?)
We got to drive down some sand dunes and do some forest forging and had a low key, low stress day. We decided to drive to Chetwynd to find a hotel because there is not a huge selection in Hudson Hope.
At supper that night we ended up getting a call about one of our cows and an emergency. There was nothing we could do that night but knew we would be heading back home in the morning, not in the afternoon, cutting our time short.
“The best laid plans” is how the saying goes, but I want to throw out – “the best of no plans”. We had none and simply took to the road before us and let ourselves be adventuresome to wherever we ended up.
Turns out, plans are not always the way to go! We had a great time with none!