It's a date Alysha Pastor won't soon forget.
What was supposed to be a quick overnight trip to Burnaby, turned into a multi-day ordeal of washouts, mudslides, snow storms and mountain roads.
Pastor, a Vernon resident, met Mitch three weeks ago and, after a few dates, decided to accompany him to Burnaby to check on his apartment last Saturday, as Mitch is currently working out of Kamloops.
The plan was to spend the night at the Coast before heading back to the Interior.
But Mother Nature had other plans as one of the worst storms in recent history struck, blocking all routes from the Lower Mainland to the Interior.
The pair set out Sunday morning from Burnaby like they had planned and made it as far as Chilliwack before being turned around.
“It was raining really, really bad. It was probably the most rain I had ever seen,” said Pastor, who is a nurse aide working on the COVID floor at Vernon Jubilee Hospital.
With the highway closed, the pair visited some friends in Chilliwack before heading back to Burnaby to re-assess their options.
The delay caused Pastor to miss her shift, but not wanting to miss another shift, she and Mitch decided to go through Whistler to Lytton via Highway 99 and then head south toward home.
But that plan was derailed as well.
“When we got to Whistler, I got a call from my dad who said, 'There was a mudslide near Lytton, so I think you guys are trapped,'” she said.
They spent a few hours in Whistler; they looked at booking a flight, but the cost was prohibitive.
So, it was back on the road, this time to Pemberton where they talked to a few locals and learned of a forest service road they could travel.
The pair decided to gas up Mitch's four-wheel-drive truck, purchase some food to take with them and venture into the unknown.
But this option had its own challenges in the form of near-white-out conditions.
“It took us four hours to get up and down it because it was snowing so hard at the top,” said Pastor.
They pressed on and eventually made it to Lillooet at 7:30 p.m., where they were once stopped by a closed highway.
Fortunately for them, this closure only last a few hours and by 11 p.m. they were in Kamloops.
“We had been driving in the same vehicle for like 15 hours together,” laughed Pastor, who arrived back in Vernon early in the morning.
Their overnight getaway had morphed into a 40-hour adventure.
One nice thing about the trip? The young couple had a chance to get to know each other.
“It went really well. He's an awesome guy,” said Pastor who was “hanging out” with Mitch again this weekend.
“It was kind of funny how it all worked out.”
