Jasper, reporting from Kamloop

Hi all!

This is my (Jasper) first contribution to this blog and to keep the mums in touch of our adventures on the North-American continent. Or whatever that sentence means. Frans' last entry ended Wednesday afternoon when we had gone shopping. Since then, much has changed; we are in Mount Robson Provincial Park now, we have had the pleasure of listening to Frans Bouwer on a local Dutch Canadian radio station and Frans' goatee has frozen off during the night. Wednesday morning, after waking up at half past five I had a talk with my mom via Skype at half past six. Sander picked us up at 11 am to go and fix several things on the van (change the oil and airfilter in the course of which we destroyed Hope's ramps, using silicone kit to make the windows airtight and installing carpet on our beds as not to destroy our air mattresses). We stopped at Kaltyre to ask where the oil tank was located and a really nice guy of some 60 years of age entertained Frans and me with stories of his roadtrip across Europe in the 70's.

Thursday evening we had dinner with Frans' aunt and cousin who live in Canada at a fantastic Greek restaurant. The day after we picked up some pillows and sleeping bags at Frans' aunt's house and we bought an apple in the Safeway. But the most notable thing about Friday was a performance of the band 'Maria in the Shower' which we visited that evening. They played in a local bar and the band consisted of drummer, a guitar/trumpet player, a bass guitar/ double bass player and the main singer of the band who could play accordeon and trumpet at the same time while climbing onto the double contrabass! One weird thing about Canada is that, in the spirit of the promotion of sober driving, non-alcoholic drinks are free or at least very cheap in bars!

We originally had the idea to start our journey to Jasper National Park early in the afternoonish on Saturday. However, the weather forecast for the Rockies was very bad (~25 cm of snow was expected to fall, and that's vertically!) so we decided to take no risks and try to get as far as possible before evening. Therefore, we took off at 10 am after saying goodbye to Hope, Bill, Kaylee and Art, the ugliest but also sweetest dog in the world. On the way we incidentally turned on the radio and (chance would have it) we received a local Dutch Canadian radio station. The dj who hadn't been to Holland since the seventies judging on his way of talking was first telling us of the problems ING was coping with in Holland and after this, it only got better! Next up was Frans Bauer with an incredible performance singing the world hit 'Heb je even voor mij'. Needless to say, Frans, Sander and I couldn't help shedding some tears while listening to this sweet memory of our home country (videos are online). Then, on a more serious note, the rubric 'Heaven and Earth' followed, in which Psalm 374.83cll was used to explain the dissimilarity between the extinction of the caste system in the Flevopolder in the 90's on the one hand and the intensity of the Japanese winter monsoon on the other hand.

Anyway.. at 5ish we entered Jasper National Park where the snowfall was very severe. Luckily, this lasted for only half an hour and the rest of the day the weather was fine. We stopped for the night in Mount Robson Provincial Park and made some dinner (macaroni, courgette, onion and beef) after which Frans and Sander set to sewing the curtains which we needed in the van while I did the dishes. At 10 pm we started to prepare the van for the night, an activity which included covering all windows with curtains or towels, fold out the bench in the back of the bus, covering it with carpet, inflating the air matress, letting Frans undress and climb into the coffin which is the top bunk, unpacking the sleeping bags, finding out that the van was parked in such a way that we would wake up from the sun shining into our eyes, moving the van on a dark parking lot with all windows covered, having a really, really good laugh about it and letting Frans tell us some stories about the lifestyle of a typical mussel. The night was extremely cold, a fact which became especially apparent when I needed to take a leak outside. However, when we woke up, the sun was shining and not a cloud dotted the sky and we had an amazing look on Mount Robson (3954 m high). After having some bagels for breakfast and cleaning the ice from the inside of the windows with underpants we were ready to hit the road. We're off to Seattle now, where we hope to arrive sometime tomorrow. 

SuperPaleozoic (sorry world, I'm doing this for Nienke) bye!