Up, Up, and Away

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

START:  Island View RV Resort, Osoyoos, BC - 10:30 a.m.

STOP:  Pair-A-Dice RV Park, Creston, BC - 6:30 p.m.

WEATHER:  Overcast; rainy and warm for most of the day; some sunny breaks toward the end!

Well, if Beula didn't have buns o' steel before, she definitely does after today.  With all the mountain passes on our route, the majority of our travelling today seemed to be uphill and for what were pretty lengthy stretches of time each time.  But slow and steady wins the race and Dad pulled over every time it looked like she was getting too hot (which felt like every five minutes) to give her (& Mom) a break before continuing onward and upward.

We saw quite a few little deer (three?) on our journey today, and a moose, griz, big horn sheep, samsquanch and raven (Mom:  "It's Sheryl's sister, Raven Symone") if you count all the statues we passed while traveling through Regal Ridge, which of course you wouldn't, so we'll stick with the three deer.  We stopped in Grand Forks to load up on some Subway, where we found our third deer at the end of a side street just munchin' carefree on someone's front lawn and then realized the street was a dead end, so had to back up (Dad made sure to still stop at the stop sign, hahah) in order to turn around and park near the Subway.  We pulled up basically into the tree of someone's front yard, which harbored little weird, spiky, fruity, nutty fruit things, so Mike took it upon himself to just reach out the window and yank one off.

Mom:  "You can't just pick stuff off someone's tree!"

Mike:  "Well just one!"

Moral of the story is that we still have no idea what the hell it is and you shouldn't pick unknown foodstuffs off someone's tree and attempt to taste it.

We eventually made it to Trail, where Dad was going to drop off a resume, but that turned into basically just driving through town, only stopping to get gas, as le Paw felt he wasn't at the point where he needed to be applying for work four provinces away just yet.  Stopping to get gas proved to be an adventure in itself, as after attempting to start her up and drive away, the brake light was on and the brake pedal decided it was going to stay stuck to the floor.  So that was an unexpected treat, especially since the kindly gas gentleman just finished telling us that Kootenay Pass was coming up and will "get yer attention!"  After checking the brake fluid and seeing that it was still full and everything was in working order, we started driving to at least get out of the way of the gas pumps and then VOILA - light went off and brake was fine.  So "reassured" that it was probably just this, or probably just that, we set off in search of the final climb of the day, keeping in mind it probably wouldn't hurt to pull over every now and then on the way back down to give the ol' brakes a rest, too.

Finally, we arrived alive at Pair-A-Dice RV Park in Creston, which was a refreshing change in price from the night before (being only one dirt road loop of RVs and all) and settled in for the night.  The storm that we thought was chasing us the whole way there only manifested into a few drizzles and then gave us the wondrous sight you see above (minus the scrapyard below that I cropped out for your viewing pleasure.)

Tonight's main event was laundry-related, starring our $5 net laundry bag from Wal-Mart.  After waiting for the touched lovebirds (Dad:  "Well come on, you don't need to be draped all over each other doing laundry") to get their crap outta the dryer so we could put our stuff in, Mom came back to report that our laundry bag had been stolen, which sent Dad and Mike into a heroic rage on Mom's behalf.

Dad:  "Which trailer are they in?"

Mom:  "I don't know."

Dad:  "Maybe I should go take a walk, I might see them in the window.  Maybe they're admiring it."

Hahaha.  So after Dad and Mike crept around outside their trailer for 10 minutes and then came back to concoct various plans of revenge, Mom went off to get the last of the laundry ("I don't even wanna go out there now.  I feel like I'm gonna get mugged!") and came back with...  Can you guess?  THE LAUNDRY BAG!  Wooooopsie dooooodle.

Now feeling sufficiently loser-ish, we decided to call it a night.  Tomorrow we'll hopefully be able to meet up with the Smylies before they head out of town for the weekend and then we only have one more mountain pass standing in the way of our flat freedom.

Letting the good times roll,