Thursday, June 7th

We left Salmo at 8:45am after  our friends treated us to a hearty breakfast.   We made our way down to the Slocan Valley and up it through Slocan, New Denver and finally Nakusp.  The route through the valley is nothing less than stunning and right now it is green and lush with new growth.

At Slocan, we visited the site where we had the most wonderful swim a couple of summers ago after a bikeride along the River.  Then, it was like paradise, calm and warm and sunny.  Today its warm and sunny but not calm and is high and moving fast like so many rivers in the interior now.

 

We were playing my Canadiana playlist on the Ipod but turned it off out of respect for the Valhallas when  we came around the corner and they were  boldly and beautifully taking over the viewscape with the steely grey of the Slocan Lake below.

This valley is a constant mindblower with its beauty.  You can see why people are drawn to it and seek to hide in its nooks and crannies near the river and lake.

Most of the way up the valley we were alone on the highway.  The summer nuttiness on the roads has not yet begun.   It’ll be a different story in a couple of weeks.

We made our way to Nakusp and enjoyed a walk along its shoreline on the Arrow Lakes.  It is a lovely lakeside path with flowers and gardens along the way.    The lake was as still as a mirror and mezmerizing with the mountains in behind.  We walked back up to the main drag and had a coffee and snack at a little bakery.  Then we hit the road for Galenas to get the Arrow Lakes ferry over to the Revelstoke side to meet our friends Bill and Joka at Blanket Provincial Park.  On the way to the ferry, we treated ourselves to a soak at Helcyon Hotsprings.  We floated around in the healing pools for one and a half hours in the most glorious setting.  The pictures say it all.

We’ve had a great couple of days in Salmo, a small town just outside of Nelson.  Yesterday Guy went to Nelson for a looky loo with our travelling companions Bill and Joka.

 

 

I stayed in Salmo with my friends Anna and Peter and Heidi and visited with them all day and helped with party prep.  Anna invited all the neighbors over for a BBQ.  It was great meeting of lovely people.

Today, Peter and Guy and I cycled above Nelson along the decommissioned Burlington Northern Railway line with its great vistas of Nelson and Kootenay Lake.

 

 

Then we split up.  Guy and Peter went across the orange bridge in Nelson in search of an old abandoned property with old trees and an abandoned swimming pool.  They had fun traipsing around through the woods looking for the property.

I spent a couple of hours walking around Nelson.  I bought a couple of used books, Anne of Avonlea and a biography on Lucy Maud Montgomery.  And at another bookstore found a copy of Anne of Green Gables.  Since we are going to Prince Edward Island, I thought I would get in the mood and do some reading about the main tourist attraction of the island.  I hit the Kootenanay Coop at its new location and loaded up on healthy road food for our trip to Revelstoke tomorrow.  Gotta keep my driver fueled.

Then we went to Oso Negro, the most funky coffee shop around.  We love it there.  Beautiful coffee, gorgeous landscaping and setting.  We always  come to Oso when we come to Nelson.

Tonight we had dinner out at the Salmo golf course together and toasted all of our upcoming endeavors.  Life is so full and each one of us has something to toast and celebrate.

Tommorrow we bid our friends adieu and head out to the Slocan Valley to make our way to the ferry to Revelstoke.

Monday started out brilliantly.  We got up after a long sleep and made oats and coffee in the sunshine.  Afterwards, I took a walk and Guy started a painting.

 

This painting was inspired by the phantom house on the hill above the campsite.  He actually painted from a photo that he took the night before just as the sun set.

 

The skies parted after the rain,  and the sun was poking out  creating a pink backdrop behind the house. The painting conveys the intense color of the sky very well.

 

The tone of the day changed shortly thereafter and it was a lesson on the fact that we can have a plan and timing in mind about where we want to be but we need to be open that things can change on a dime and there will be delays.  When I wrote this post, we were sitting in front of an automotive shop in Oliver getting our brakes fixed. When we stopped for gas just before Oliver, Guy noticed the rear brakes were really hot and pungent with the brake smell. We found out that the rear brake pads were sticking due to the calipers not releasing in the rear wheels . We tried three other shops before this one but they were all booked up with jobs.  This family operation was so helpful  and accommodating.  We sat  and waited in front of their shop, I hooked up to power and charging all our devices while writing the blog and Guy doing a Sudoku.  The sun was shining, and it was very pleasant there. Couldn’t have picked a better day to sit in front of a repair shop.  They had us fixed up in a few hours.  We are glad the problem surfaced in Oliver and not in the middle of the Rockies and thankful to Shade Tree Repairs in Oliver for fitting us in and helping us get on our way.

In the late afternoon and evening we made it to our destination of Salmo in the Kootenays where our good friends were waiting for us to arrive.

 

 

 

Sunday morning,  we made our rainy trip to the Okanogan.   We were up by 5:30am and took the 7am sailing from Schwartz Bay to Tsawwassen. Enroute, we stopped and visited my aunt and uncle in Langley for a long overdue visit.  We arrived in Peachland by 3pm as hoped and drove up the lake to South Okanogan campsite. It poured the rest of the afternoon, so we hunkered down with a game of crib as the rain danced on the top of the popup. The skies cleared in the evening so we went for a short trail walk up the lake a ways and around the campsite and then had tea and ovaltine before bed.

 

 

Hello. I apologize for my absence after day 1. This could be the way it goes sometimes due to technology charging or wireless access issues or basically just having a good time and taking it all in. This time it was timing and tiredness. But I’m back baby and I’ve got two days to catch up on.

Saturday June 2

This was a full on Victoria day. We got the Pacific water and the bottle is now half full. There is plenty of room left for the Big Atlantic. Must make sure I don’t mistakenly hand it to Guy to drink on some hot dry Saskatchewan road.

We got up and drove out to Beacon Hill Park and down the hill to the water. Guy with his little empty bottle made his way down to the ocean. As I filmed him on our camera, a man with the cutest little black lab pup unknowingly joined the movie and my oohs and ahs at the pup are quite audible as the camera flipped about filming the ground instead of Guy.

 

Back to filming Guy, he narrates what it is he’s doing but it is inaudible. So, we do a second take. He goes back to the top of the hill and I refilm and as he just gets the water in the bottle and starts a commentary about the significance of the water, the camera notifies me that the card is full on the camera and shuts off. We just finished in time. So now we have 2 half baked versions of this monumental moment.

Then back up to Beacon Hill park we go for a lovely walk around James Bay with its incredible views along paths lined with Alberta Rose. The scent is intoxicating and takes me back to Beach Grove in Tsawwassen where I grew up. The path to the beach near our house was lined with the same roses. It’s the smell of summer.

We end up at Emily Carr’s house in James Bay on Government St.  It is a wonderful old home over a 100 years old and well taken care with beautiful gardens. Emily’s father at one time owned a huge track of land around the house out to Beacon Hill Park. The house and the nature around it inspired her stories and her art from a young age. We both enjoyed the tour through the old house and sensed the ghosts of years past wandering the grand old rooms.

 

 

After our walk, we lunched and re-parked the truck to avoid a parking ticket for going over our 3 hours and then visited the Royal BC Museum and saw “In the Time of the Pharaohs”. It was a fascinating exhibition featuring Egypt and its history and its artifacts, mostly from around 3000 BC. It was so incredible to look at these pieces which included little animal figures that were buried with the dead to aid them in the afterlife, regal jewelry that you could imagine Cleopatra wearing,  ornately painted burial boxes and ornaments like the green stone cat. This was my favorite of course.   There was even a mummified little cat.  I love the fact that the Egyptians loved and revered their felines.

After a full and enjoyable day, we headed back to the RV Park and picnicked and had an early night.

As a tent camper all my life, I never thought I would see the day of camper life. But a few nights camping the year before last and the aches and pains that followed made Guy and I realize that a simple camper could work well for us. And oh, we love that foam mattress and not worrying about putting a tent up in the rain.

I should mention briefly the Oceanside RV Park in Saanichton where we stayed our two nights in Victoria.  Because of the popup camper, we are now classified as an RV, so it puts us in places that can be, quite frankly, foreign and a little horrifying. Oceanside RV park is a full on RV park with huge RV like 50 footers with all the modern conveniences. Our little unit got quite a lot of attention. We are not sure if people liked its simplicity or were cackling at its smallness. We saw a couple walk by looking and smiling and we thought we heard the wife say “Henry look at the cute doghouse”.

 

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