If they call it the Balancing Rock Trail, there must be a balancing rock somewhere!

Another beautiful day, and again with much less forest fire smoke. Unfortunately, the fires are still burning here in much of British Columbia, but I guess the winds have shifted enough that the smoke is not bothering us in this area.

We like to take advantage of the perfect hiking weather, so that's exactly what we did!

Looks like we're taking a little detour into the U.S. next week...

We had a nice day yesterday! The weather was perfect, and there wasn't very much smoke in the air. We had parked overnight at the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area, right at their info center. So when it opened, we went in to see what trails were the best.

It's mostly a wetlands area, but there is some forest as well. We decided on a one hour hike to get the blood flowing. It's only 4 kms (2.5 miles), but we wanted to do a bike ride afterwards as well.

No schedule for the next four weeks!

We were in Creston, British Columbia with the motorhome back in November of 2007, and my comment on the blog at the time was ...it's a really nice town. Seemed like a place we could live, actually.

And we still like it! In fact, we might hang out here for a couple of days. We have no schedule between now and September 25th when we have to be at Abbotsford (a suburb of Vancouver) to fly back to Ontario for Ruth's nephew's wedding.

Not a very smooth day, but we did get a couple of things accomplished

Well, lots to talk about today!

From the Wasa Provincial Park, I called the Kal Tire store in Cranbrook, only about 35 kms (22 miles) south of the park. Fortunately, Sherman's two front tires had arrived! They said they weren't very busy, and should be able to install them without much of a wait.

Lindsey and Justin followed along to see if we could figure out how long it would take to do the job, but by the time we got there it was almost 11:00am. I sort of figured they would end up carrying on on their own towards Kelowna because they fly out of there on Wednesday morning.

A nice hike, a beach, and some rain!

We said goodbye to the relatives, and got Sherman packed up to hit the road. Not going far though, only to Wasa Provincial Park between Fairmont and Cranbrook.

First stop though, was just outside of Fairmont at the Hoodoo Trail. Only a short 3 kms (1.8 mile) hike, which is enough when you've got a 5 year old with you! Cameron (age 7) is pretty good, but Sadie isn't quite into hiking just yet!

They finally arrived!

So yesterday morning we were waiting for our daughter Lindsey, son in law Justin, and grandkids Cameron and Sadie to arrive. They had been stopped by a highway accident that closed the road and they ended up having to get a motel room for the night.

Then, they got on the road at 5:45am to do the final part of the drive here. They still had another two and a half hours or so two go when I got message from our daughter... the road was closed again due to another accident!

It didn't take long to remember why we don't use RV parks

Woke up Friday morning to a few drops of rain on the roof. We decided to get up and drive down the hill we were parked on and into the town of Invermere about 25 kms (15 miles) away. Good thing we did, because on the way it actually rained fairly steadily for about 45 minutes, so we didn't have to deal with the wet gravel road.

Found the visitors info place in Invermere and they had a good size parking lot and fast free wifi. Had breakfast there and then went to stock up on some groceries because our daughter Lindsey and her family were scheduled to arrive yesterday evening.

We didn't play tourist for very long!

We got up at 6:00am yesterday morning and started driving right away. We were only about 100 kms (62 miles) from Lake Louise, and we figured we would get there before the crowds.

Wrong!

Jasper, Lake Louise, and Banff are beautiful, however...

They are not so beautiful during busy tourist season! What a circus!

We never "planned" on being in this area at all. And certainly not at this time of year. But when I checked the map to figure out our route down to Fairmont Hot Springs, coming down the Icefields Parkway was the only route that made sense. To go any other way would have added at least 250 kms (155 miles). Although, it might have been worth it!

Shattered into a thousand pieces...

The day started off fairly clear, but as we made our way to the town of McBride, it got smokier. Which is a real shame, because that area is beautiful with the mountains on either side of the Robson Valley.

We were wanting to do a hike, but there was really no point. Not good to be breathing in the smoky air, and we wouldn't get much of a view anyhow.

Another great free campsite!

Said goodbye to my Uncle Dave and Aunt Melissa, and hope to see them again somewhere in the world! They were talking about going to Newfoundland and renting an RV, so maybe they'll do that while we are there next summer. That would be fun.

We took off on the Yellowhead Highway #16, heading southeast towards Jasper National Park.

A nice day around Prince George, British Columbia

We had a really nice day yesterday. Uncle Dave and Aunt Melissa planned a three hour hike for us all, and we were going to do it in the morning, but as 10 o'clock rolled around we decided to go out for lunch first and then do the hike afterwards.

They took us out to the Northern Lights Estate Winery. We didn't go for the wine... but we had a really good meal!

Seems there is no escaping it

We were laughing the other day about how long it takes us to get anywhere. Our regular readers know that when we're traveling in the motorhome, 200 kms (124 miles) a day is a long driving day. But that's because there is too much to see along the way!

And every little town has an interesting story to tell. Yesterday was a good example.

An interesting day... a bear scare, forest fires, and helicopters

We had delicious bacon and egg breakfast with my cousin Calvin and his wife Brenda, but being a work day they were soon off to the daily grind, leaving us to depart whenever we were ready.

I decided this was a good opportunity to change Sherman's engine oil, so I got everything out and crawled underneath Sherman to drain the oil and change the filter. I was about to screw on the new filter when I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I looked over and had to do a double take!

Well, four new tires are better than none

We went back over to the Kal Tire store first thing Thursday morning to get Sherman's new tires installed. But unfortunately, the two tires we were waiting for didn't show up! When I had ordered them, we were told they would be in "Wednesday at the latest"... but it didn't happen.

So, there were four tires there. The other two they were now told would show up Monday, which is too late for us!