Sunday, March 22, 2009

The view from the North...



I had to go to Smithers a week ago for a meeting. I live in northeastern BC, and Smithers is sort of between the middle northern interior and northwestern BC. By standards other than Canadian, it's just a hop and a skip away. But Canada is a frikin big country, and BC isn't so small itself. Smithers is 400k west of Prince George (the "big city" of northern BC.) I'm 400k northeast of Prince George - over the northern pass of the Rockies. Not a drive I want to do in the winter. (And yes, here in the north it's still winter in March.)

Anyway, I had to fly to Smithers. But since I live in a small town, and Smithers is a small town, there are no direct flights. I had to fly to Vancouver in the morning (1200k,) sit around the airport all day, and fly up to Smithers in the evening. What would have been an 800k drive became a 2400k couple of flights. I'm tired just remembering it...

But the cool thing about all that flying was that I got to play with my camera during the flight, and get shots like the one above of downtown Vancouver and Stanley Park.

Or this one of the west end of Vancouver. I love the horizon.





And once I got to Smithers, I got shots like this:



Now I remember why I love living in the north, and put up with all day flights from one small town to another...