Vernon

After almost a week in Vancouver, it was time to leave and head off to Vernon instead, to meet up with Curt and Nicole. Friday morning, I jumped on a bus to Kelowna. Devan wanted to pick me up in Kelowna because he had a friend there, so I drove from Kelowna to Vernon with him instead of going all the way to Vernon with the bus. When we got to Vernon, we couldn't get a hold of neither Curt nor Nicole, so we drove by Nicole's work, her dad's surf shop, and said hi instead. Shortly after, Curt had learned how to use his phone and called us :) We met up with him at his house. Happy reunions, but it really is a strange feeling to drop by your old travel buddies' home while and see them in their "normal" life. Nothing wrong with that, but it is very different from the two last places we hung out: East Bundy Backpackers in Bundaberg, Australia where we all were fruit-picking slaves and Koh Lanta in Thailand where we ripped around on scooters, snorkeled, drank Sang Sum buckets and stuffed ourselves with cheap food.

Devan and I each got our own room in Curt's parents' place, a sweet house overlooking the lake. At night we went to Nicole's friend Rebecca's birthday party, where Curt passed out on the lawn after too much Guitar Hero and Jack Daniel's. Quite good fun for a Dane like me to crash a house party in a random country town in Canada... :)

Fallon flew from Vancouver and joined us the next day, when we were curing our hangovers with bacon, hash browns and eggs at a local breakfast restaurant. We spent the afternoon at a local beach floating on air mattresses and getting ourselves sunburned. At night, we went to a local restaurant for dinner and to the bar Curt works at afterwards. I have no idea how those country town folks can keep drinking several times each weekend... People in Vernon seem to be quite simple. Work all week -> Sunbathe/Snow board -> Drink -> Work all week... Although they live in a beautiful place, I would go nuts if I lived there, grow tired of recognizing all the faces you see on the street and miss all stuff a city has to offer.

On Sunday, we went floating down a river about an hour west of Vernon. It was a cool and fun thing to do, especially since it was about 30 degrees and the scenery was nice. Although it took 4-5 hours, which was way to long. Sucks I forgot my camera at Curt's place :( But what sucked a whole lot more was that we were delayed several hours by some dumb locals who were coming along, which resulted in us leaving way to late. Way to late to enjoy the insanely beautiful scenery of the Rocky Mountains we were meant to drive through in daylight, on our way to Devan's place in Calgary, Alberta. I would be lying if I said that I wasn't right pissed off about it. So was Devan, who had even hired a car to take me on a guided tour through the Rockys. GRRRRRRRRR... F*CK.

I spontaneously changed my plans a little bit on the way back, and jumped off in Banff instead of going to Calgary with Devan. Fortunately, he happened to know a hostel, where I checked in at half past one in the morning... It must have been three in the morning before Devan made it back home. Sucks he has to be a work at 7 PM :-| Going to spend a day or two in Banff, feel like spending some "Quality Rasmus time™" in the Rocky Mountains :)