The next morning, as was Darryl's schedule, we met for breakfast at 7:00 and were on the road again by 8:00 heading  to the memorial for John Buchan, a Scottish writer who settled here in the early years and found the country much to his liking.  Standing at the monument, overlooking a lake that could easily have been a highland glacial loch, it’s easy to understand why. 

            The rift is bordered by cliffs on either side, separated by about a half-mile gap, about 1,000 feet deep.  It is easy to see how animals and culture could have developed differently on each side with no real access to the other.  It occurred to me that the beginnings of the split between our branch becoming human and another branch remaining something else was at a place like this, where one protohuman creature, a bit different from the rest but not yet knowing how, looked over the edge and felt the pull to go over there just to see what’s on the other side... not for food or a mate, but just because it wanted to know. That one leads to us.

            From there we followed Darryl down through the canyon roads to Burke’s Luck Potholes— not a monument to bad paving, as we Americans might think, but a park encompassing a wonderful set of rock formations and waterfalls, dedicated to the memory of Tom Burke, a miner in the early gold rush days who staked a claim nearby and accurately predicted that large gold deposits would be found in the area.  They were, just not on his claim, hence the reference to his luck (or lack thereof).