Blog Post No. 22 – BC Westbound and Home

We entered BC from Lake Louise early in the evening of Thursday August 29, and continued through Kicking Horse Pass and Yoho National Park to Golden.  On the way, we saw two female elk grazing by the side of the road near Field.  My brother Jim lives in Golden, so we went to his place to have dinner and park our motorhome for the night.  It was good to catch up after not having seen him for more than a year.

 

On Friday morning we had breakfast and then prepared to continue our journey.  Jim had taken the day off, thinking we were going to arrive this evening (as originally planned), and was planning to clean up his home and yard a bit before we arrived, but we thought it was fine.  Instead, he now planned to go and look for his cell phone, which he had lost in the bush at work on Thursday, and probably do a little fishing as well.  So we drove west through Golden and over the Rogers Pass, but didn’t stop at the summit or at Canyon Hot Springs as we had considered, because of low cloud and rain.

We stopped for lunch at a rest area at Craigallachie (west of Sicamous), where the last spike in the Canadian Pacific Railway was driven in 1885.  This was a very important event in Canada’s history and development, as it meant that there was now a way to transport goods and people coast-to-coast, without having to go through the USA or take the long sea route around South America.  Continuing west to Salmon Arm, we stopped for gas as well as a long-overdue oil change.  From there we drove to the west end of Shuswap Lake and turned north across the river, up the west side of Adams Lake, and west to Barrierre (north of Kamloops), a route that Jim had told us about which cut quite a distance off our trip.    We continued north along the North Thompson River to Little Fort (we saw a bear along the way), then west to Bridge Lake.  At this point we made a mistake and turned off the highway onto a gravel road that looked like a short cut to Watch Lake and Green Lake – it got us there, but was slow and winding, and we would have been better off staying on the highway to Lone Butte and turning south there.  Anyway, we got to Rhonda’s parents (Al and Lynn) place at 6:00 PM, where Al already had the barbeque going.  After dinner we just relaxed, watched TV, and updated them on our adventures.

                                               At the Last Spike of the CPR, near Sicamous

 

Saturday August 31 was a much-needed day of relaxation.  It was Day 71 of our trip, and only the eighth time that we were able to stay two nights in a row at the same location and therefore didn’t have to pack up the RV in the morning and move on.  Al was in a golf tournament and he left mid-morning, and the rest of us just relaxed and enjoyed the lake (Rhonda and the girls went to SMAC, a local charity thrift store).  Colton and Nicole (remember them, from Day 3 of our holiday?) arrived in the early afternoon, on their way home to Prince George after a holiday in the Vancouver area.  There were certainly a few other people around enjoying the lake, but not as many as I would have expected on the last long weekend of the summer.  After dinner we had a campfire.

                                           A relaxing day at the lake, to end our holiday

We were all up reasonably early on Sunday September 1, the last day of our 72-day adventure, to say good-bye to Al who had an early start for the final round of the golf tournament.  We packed the RV relatively quickly by just throwing everything on the bed, knowing we didn’t have to sleep in it again for a while.  Colton and I pulled the boat dock out of the water for the winter, and we left the lake by 9:00 AM.  Unlike most of the rest of our holiday, we weren’t covering any new terrain today, having driven this section many times in the past.  It was an uneventful trip back to the ferry terminal at Tsawwassen, with stops for gas, fresh vegetables and fruit at a fruit stand in Spences Bridge, and lunch at a rest area just outside Hope.  We got to the ferry just after 3:00, but the 4:00 sailing to Victoria was already full, so we had to wait for the 5:00 trip.  We enjoyed a buffet dinner on-board, and were home by 8:00, the end of our amazing summer adventure.  We were excited to see our kitchen, which had been extensively renovated while we were away, but that’s another story.