We’re spending a few days exploring in the Similkameen-Boundary area under blue skies filled with tumbling clouds. Today we drove to Grand Forks, taking the winding Bridesville-Rock Creek road through the most beautiful soft forests and grasslands. A charmed landscape. We knew this almost right away, that we’d entered an enchanted place, when a small rabbit hopped off the road and a bobcat bounded across into the trees a little further along. Deer, ground squirrels, a marmot — every one of them looking suprised to see a car, the squirrel waking from a deep sleep in the sunlight to scamper aside. A mountain bluebird took its time with whatever it was eating. A worm? A grasshopper? We kept seeing wildflowers — scarlet gilia, Indian paintbrush, and then a small thicket of larkspur, sticky geranium (I think it was this one, the Geranium viscosissimum; I was so busy trying to get a photograph while it waved in the wind that I forgot to touch the leaves…). We drove into Grand Forks to discover the Farmers Market in full swing which was lovely. John bought a confit of blueberries and garlic and some pickled asparagus and then we went went to the Borscht Bowl for the eponymous soup and some light vareniki made with buttermilk dough. Amazingly good.
[…] it backwards, so to speak, leaving Highway 3 (the Crowsnest Highway) at Bridesville and driving the most magical route through pine forests, along soft gravel, through grassy meadows, past several peaceful farms where […]
[…] love the Boundary country. We’ve driven through it in all weathers, most memorably this time. And there’s a section in my book, Mnemonic: A Book of Trees, about the drive over […]