Driving down to Calgary was a little different this time. I’ve usually been able to leave work early enough that I can still do the trip in daylight. Or at least mostly daylight. This time I was at work later on nearly the shortest day of the year. It was easily dark by the time I was passing through Red Deer.
Red Deer looks different in the dark.
At one point I was wondering if I had made a wrong turn and was actually heading towards Rocky Mountain House. I guess “wrong turn” would be an incorrect term. Considering it is ONE road from Edmonton to Calgary, with no intersections, it would be very hard to take a wrong turn. More likely I would have accidentally taken an exit. And things that sound utterly silly in the cold light of the computer screen make a searing sense when you are trying to keep your car steady on a dark road. Where are the signs that would tell me what road this is, the road I’ve been on for the last hour?
I certainly didn’t want to risk trying to unfold a map.
Thankfully, I had had my iPhone working at providing audio entertainment. A nice glowing screen awaited my thumb, easy to see in the dark of the car. A few screen presses presents the maps and GPS and I can see I’m clearly on QE2 and I must have been delusional to think otherwise.
i.e. I’m at my parent’s now.