blockade

if it isn't one thing it's another in my attempt to get out of BC...

i'm nearly on the border of alberta, and with it a return to friendly soil!!!

of course it's not that simple... AGAIN!... because up ahead of me on the road is yet ANOTHER obstacle!



a herd of elk blocks my progress...

now i know how elk typically work. honk your horn and they'll get their horns out of the way.

not these ones...

turns out these ones aren't just casually wandering onto the road. no. their here to stop just ME...

seems these guys are buddies with mountain sheep, and their really mad at how i humiliated the king of the rams last month. hearing that i was coming back through this area (they read it on my blog... have to remember to keep things a little more secretive in the future) their here to stop me...

well it looked kinda bleak. i couldn't get past them, and they weren't going to let me through. they were letting other cars through. just not me.

after spending the afternoon on the BC side of their imposed line i was really worried i'd have to back track into BC to try and find an alternate route. however as the sun began setting and it got darker i noticed something.

i couldn't recognize individual elk anymore. they all looked the same. why with those conditions maybe they won't recognize my car anymore...

to make sure they lost track of me i pretended to goto bed in my car. though what i really did was hop in and roll the window down. this way i could crawl out my window without opening the door and turning on the cabin light. once outside my car i threw some towels over my headlights so they won't be visible once my car was on. i then waited for a different car to come by to start my engine so that it's noise didn't seem out of place.

when that car finally showed up i drove down the highway away from them as fast as i could. getting around a bend i then pulled a u-turn. i then turning on my high beams. with these on i then casually drove back toward the blockade... but was it casual enough?

reaching the line my heart nearly stopped as the elk didn't move forcing me to slow down... getting within mere feet of them time seemed to cease as they looked at my car. it wasn't till i realized they were squinting in my high beams, and unable to see me that i relaxed.

then they parted, and let me through! can you believe that people of the innerweb i outsmarted someone!!!

now sadly this whole episode cost me a day, and it's late. i'm going to push on a few more kilometers to field BC and sleep there over night. however there is a slight treat for me there. you field is home to one of the coolest palaeontologic sites in the world!!!

catch you there people of the innerweb!