Road to WorldCon, Days 0.1 and 0.2
Aug. 19th, 2015 07:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
totchipandaI want to post about this more often and more in the moment than the last two times I went, so here we go :D
It felt like a no-brainer to attend WorldCon after the site was announced in San Antonio. Spokane is a 10-12 hour drive from Edmonton, easy! You could even do it in one day if you wanted to. We get our PBS station out of Spokane, and my dad had been here when I was really little (just him, mum, and my youngest sister, who was only a couple months old at the time. I don't know why they came down, besides to visit the PBS station). I was pretty excited about it, especially once I got my license, and then my car. I could be an alternate driver! I could take my car on a road trip!
I convinced Nicole to come (I don't recall it being hard lol) and Made all the plans. July sucked pretty hard though, so all of a sudden it was August and what do you mean we're leaving in 2 weeks?!
Our date of travel arrived and off we went. We took a bit of the long way around, more because we could. We stopped to see my gramma for an hour, stopped for milkshakes at the new Peter's drive-thru in Red Deer, went to Calgary for sushi, and then continued on to Lethbridge for our first stop. It was in completely the wrong direction, taking us about 2 hours east, but Nicole's aunt wanted to see her, and let us stay the night even though she ended up not being home that night.
It was really good to break the drive up into two days. I didn't sleep well that night but didn't feel all that bad, cuz I never sleep well in a new place, and rarely sleep well in my own bed. We left in the morning and were well and truly on our way!
We both live in a city, and pretty far north for all that. Southern Alberta feels so... Empty. It's a lot like Montana. I wonder how anyone managed to settle there. It's just miles of prairie in every direction. I think the wind farm near the mountains is pretty new though, and it makes sense to have one (or several) when there were wind gust warnings all over the highway.
As we entered the mountains, we almost immediately came upon piles and piles and piles of rocks, some of them bigger than houses. It looked like the mountain had fallen down. We wondered what had happened. We didn't realize we were at the site of the Frank slide, where that's exactly what happened, the mountain fell down. Someday we'd like to go back and visit the interpretive center, which is above the slide. The picture on Wikipedia is pretty impressive but it was so much more so in person, and especially from the valley floor.
The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful. We crossed into BC with little fanfare, and had been there for a good half an hour before we realized that the signs were different. We saw deer in Fernie, had lunch in Cranbrook, and then carried on south to the border crossing at Eastpoint, Idaho. That was also uneventful, and I doubt we were the first people our guard had seen that day going to Spokane :)
It's funny sometimes, how similar the U.S. and Canada can be. Especially immediately south of the border. The scenery doesn't really change, the road sparkled a little more (literally; I remember sparkly roads when I was a kid but I don't think whatever the sparkles are is added to paving mix anymore), and then you have the road signs, which suddenly force me to look at the smaller numbers on my speedometer and guess where 45mph actually is lol.
We cut down through Idaho into Coure d'Alene until we could join up with the interstate. It was about 330pm, and the traffic seemed to be favouring people going back into there rather than out. Driving on the interstate was my most feared section of roadway. I have lots of city experience, and lots of Canadian highway experience, but I've only been a passenger on interstates before, and they're a little intimidating. But I handled it like a boss! And thank goodness for GPS, it got us into the right places at the right times.
We came off the interstate into downtown Spokane and I instantly fell in love. The buildings are still old, clearly from the past. It reminded me of coming off of Memorial Drive into downtown Calgary, where that little corner is still part of the original district, and all the streets are one-way. But the interstate there reminded me of driving on the Whitemud in Edmonton, where you're in the middle of the city but you could easily forget that of not for the signs and exits, because it goes through a bunch of valleys and you don't really see the city there. It was like that here, toodling along and all of a sudden, city.
We found the hotel easily and checked in by 5pm. I decided to take a nap because it was a long day of driving and I was grouchy. After o woke up, we ventured over to the convention center to pick up our badges, where we ran into my family. After that we went for dinner, and walked back to the hotel.
Behind us is a raised train track. At first we thought it was a motorcycle gang, but it turned out to be trains! It's an actively used set of tracks, I've heard countless trains go by. It's so close and so loud, but o don't find it annoying, and instead somewhat comforting. I used to live near train tracks (though not this close!) and after awhile I just didn't hear them anymore. Wherever these ones go, there's no crossings for some distance, because I didn't hear any whistles. Just the rattle and noise of engines and cars. From our window we can see old buildings, ones that were probably built in the early 1900s, and so much of what we saw on our walk was the same. It's so quaint and my heart is just overjoyed with it. I'm completely in love. Every time I come to Washington I wish I could stay. If only it were easy for cross-border moves!
I think I'll go rustle up some breakfast and start seriously considering getting ready :) Con opens at noon!
It felt like a no-brainer to attend WorldCon after the site was announced in San Antonio. Spokane is a 10-12 hour drive from Edmonton, easy! You could even do it in one day if you wanted to. We get our PBS station out of Spokane, and my dad had been here when I was really little (just him, mum, and my youngest sister, who was only a couple months old at the time. I don't know why they came down, besides to visit the PBS station). I was pretty excited about it, especially once I got my license, and then my car. I could be an alternate driver! I could take my car on a road trip!
I convinced Nicole to come (I don't recall it being hard lol) and Made all the plans. July sucked pretty hard though, so all of a sudden it was August and what do you mean we're leaving in 2 weeks?!
Our date of travel arrived and off we went. We took a bit of the long way around, more because we could. We stopped to see my gramma for an hour, stopped for milkshakes at the new Peter's drive-thru in Red Deer, went to Calgary for sushi, and then continued on to Lethbridge for our first stop. It was in completely the wrong direction, taking us about 2 hours east, but Nicole's aunt wanted to see her, and let us stay the night even though she ended up not being home that night.
It was really good to break the drive up into two days. I didn't sleep well that night but didn't feel all that bad, cuz I never sleep well in a new place, and rarely sleep well in my own bed. We left in the morning and were well and truly on our way!
We both live in a city, and pretty far north for all that. Southern Alberta feels so... Empty. It's a lot like Montana. I wonder how anyone managed to settle there. It's just miles of prairie in every direction. I think the wind farm near the mountains is pretty new though, and it makes sense to have one (or several) when there were wind gust warnings all over the highway.
As we entered the mountains, we almost immediately came upon piles and piles and piles of rocks, some of them bigger than houses. It looked like the mountain had fallen down. We wondered what had happened. We didn't realize we were at the site of the Frank slide, where that's exactly what happened, the mountain fell down. Someday we'd like to go back and visit the interpretive center, which is above the slide. The picture on Wikipedia is pretty impressive but it was so much more so in person, and especially from the valley floor.
The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful. We crossed into BC with little fanfare, and had been there for a good half an hour before we realized that the signs were different. We saw deer in Fernie, had lunch in Cranbrook, and then carried on south to the border crossing at Eastpoint, Idaho. That was also uneventful, and I doubt we were the first people our guard had seen that day going to Spokane :)
It's funny sometimes, how similar the U.S. and Canada can be. Especially immediately south of the border. The scenery doesn't really change, the road sparkled a little more (literally; I remember sparkly roads when I was a kid but I don't think whatever the sparkles are is added to paving mix anymore), and then you have the road signs, which suddenly force me to look at the smaller numbers on my speedometer and guess where 45mph actually is lol.
We cut down through Idaho into Coure d'Alene until we could join up with the interstate. It was about 330pm, and the traffic seemed to be favouring people going back into there rather than out. Driving on the interstate was my most feared section of roadway. I have lots of city experience, and lots of Canadian highway experience, but I've only been a passenger on interstates before, and they're a little intimidating. But I handled it like a boss! And thank goodness for GPS, it got us into the right places at the right times.
We came off the interstate into downtown Spokane and I instantly fell in love. The buildings are still old, clearly from the past. It reminded me of coming off of Memorial Drive into downtown Calgary, where that little corner is still part of the original district, and all the streets are one-way. But the interstate there reminded me of driving on the Whitemud in Edmonton, where you're in the middle of the city but you could easily forget that of not for the signs and exits, because it goes through a bunch of valleys and you don't really see the city there. It was like that here, toodling along and all of a sudden, city.
We found the hotel easily and checked in by 5pm. I decided to take a nap because it was a long day of driving and I was grouchy. After o woke up, we ventured over to the convention center to pick up our badges, where we ran into my family. After that we went for dinner, and walked back to the hotel.
Behind us is a raised train track. At first we thought it was a motorcycle gang, but it turned out to be trains! It's an actively used set of tracks, I've heard countless trains go by. It's so close and so loud, but o don't find it annoying, and instead somewhat comforting. I used to live near train tracks (though not this close!) and after awhile I just didn't hear them anymore. Wherever these ones go, there's no crossings for some distance, because I didn't hear any whistles. Just the rattle and noise of engines and cars. From our window we can see old buildings, ones that were probably built in the early 1900s, and so much of what we saw on our walk was the same. It's so quaint and my heart is just overjoyed with it. I'm completely in love. Every time I come to Washington I wish I could stay. If only it were easy for cross-border moves!
I think I'll go rustle up some breakfast and start seriously considering getting ready :) Con opens at noon!
