FRIDAY,
JULY 25:
Again,
what a difference a day makes! Rained
all last night at Jasper/Hinton. Very
cool this morning, and still drizzling, even at 9:00 when I ran into a Jasper
bakery to pick up some goodies for breakfast in the truck. But when we reached out destination for the night,
Kamloops, it was dry, sunny, and warm.
First thing I did was change out of my warm 2 layers (including a heavy sweatshirt),
and into a cotton T-shirt!
Unfortunately, we didn’t have a very picturesque
ride as we bid adieu to the Canadian Rockies - too rainy and overcast. But that’s OK.
We’d been in these mountains for 3 weeks, and had so many glorious days
filled with scenery that took our breath away.
We got to spend so many days doing the things we love: hiking, bicycling, kayaking. If we had had more good weather in Jasper, we’d
intended to go white water rafting. But
we hope that there’ll be opportunities further down the road (or down the
river, as the case may be). Even though
we’re out of the Rockies, we’ll soon be in the Coastal ranges.
I noticed
that as we pulled out of our campground, neither of us had that wistful feeling
of leaving “home” that we usually have.
This place just never did feel like home to us, for some reason. It just
seemed to lack character of any kind.
And we hardly spoke literally a word to anyone else – people were either
out of the campground (presumably exploring the National Park), or else inside
their rigs. So it didn’t foster a
friendly atmosphere that we’ve experienced nearly everywhere else we’ve stayed.
We ended
up taking Hwy 5 down to Kamloops. A far,
far easier drive pulling the RV than going down 93 thru the Icefields Parkway
again and, considering the weather, would have been a virtual waste. Things started clearing up, and warming up,
about halfway down the highway. As I
wrote, when we arrived here at the campground in Kamloops around 2:30, it was
quite warm and totally dry. Kamloops is in
a semi-arid valley, like high desert. Reminds
me much of Southern California.
The RV
park is very nice - clean, picturesque
surroundings of some foothills, and the warm bright sun and clear blue sky gave
us a wonderful welcome!
Grilled steak tonight, and ate outside. Just perfect air temperature. Then all 3 of us took a walk around the
campground. Lots of people out. Nice to have relaxed time after travelling
for several hours.
Tomorrow
we continue heading southwest to Vancouver.
But we won’t be staying in Vancouver proper for reasons I wrote about
yesterday. We secured a spot in
Squamish, about 40 miles north, but not until Sunday – they were all booked
tomorrow night. So the plan is to start looking for a campground reasonably
close to Vancouver/Squamish (if we don’t get a hoped-for call from Squamish
letting us know that they have a cancellation for Sat nite), spend the night there, and then move on Monday morning.
Will
sleep with the windows open tonight J
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