Just another great day living and traveling in a motorhome

Woke up here at Twin Lakes Golf and RV Resort and had pretty much decided to stay another day. There's a short hike up the hill behind the park that we wanted to do, and the back roads here are great for cycling. In keeping with our desire to stay active, it seemed like a good spot to spend a day.

Plus, we didn't really want to be in Kelowna until this afternoon, and staying here would mean we didn't have to look for another spot to stay along the way. Besides, Kelowna is only 88 kms (55 miles) away.

Getting lots of use with our new bikes!

In Oliver, we noticed a Telus cellular store across the street from where we had been parked at the car wash. Our cell phone hasn't been working for about two weeks now. I'm still using a Telcel Mexico SIM card in it, but I didn't know if the problem was with the SIM card, or the phone itself. I had done an online chat with Telcel, and their records show that the account is active and there are no problems.

When in the Telus store, we put the Telcel SIM card in the sales girl's phone. Nope. "Cannot register on Network". However putting her SIM card in our phone? It worked right away. So at least we know the problem is not with our hardware.

Repairs done, and back in Canada!

We spent yesterday morning at the mechanic shop in Oroville, Washington. Arrived at 9:00am, and they went right to work changing Sherman's right lower ball joint and control arm assembly. We stayed in the waiting room for the entire 3 hours it took to perform the operation.

The patient came though it all successfully, but he still needs a wheel alignment.

A short hike is better than no hike at all!

First thing yesterday morning, we drove into town from our camping spot out at Palmer Lake. No traffic on the road at all, except for one border patrol vehicle that passed us.

Got ourselves parked up in our usual spot behind the public library in Oroville. We've been here in the Oroville area since September 4th now! On that day, I said "No worries, we have lots of time and can wait here a week if we have to."

Our package appears to be on its way this afternoon

We dropped off the part to be returned at the Fedex outlet near Oroville, WA. In the meantime, I was keeping an eye on the tracking details for the shipment we are waiting for.

The part had shipped from Seattle... so you would think it would not take long to get to Oroville! However... they shipped it to Oakland, California first! Then, it flew from Oakland to Spokane, where it is now awaiting delivery by truck to Oroville... scheduled to arrive before 4:30pm this afternoon!

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Change of scenery

I spent much of yesterday morning getting our part sorted out for Sherman. That part is now on it's way from Seattle, but likely won't arrive until tomorrow. And, of course we still have to get the incorrect part returned to the supplier who sold it to us. They sent us a shipping label, and we have to take the part to the Fedex pickup location here in Oroville this morning in order to return it and receive credit.

We went over to the park where our friend Tioga George is still patiently awaiting the possible return of his pet Boid.

Stuck in Oroville, Washington.

Which is not too bad, really. It's better than being stuck in Tuk!

But, we really had no intention on being in the U.S. quite this long. It was supposed to be two to three days, and now we're going on six days and it will probably be three more! All because of a mis-packaged part!

Rattlesnake!

Yesterday morning, we did a nice bike ride along the Similkameen River. It's an old railway line that's been turned into a horse/walk/bike trail. So far, it's only 4 miles (7 kms) long, so 8 miles (14 kms) return. But there are plans to extend it, and based on how they've done it so far, it's a fairly expensive trail!

It was another beautiful day, and the temperatures have cooled off a bit. High of about 75F (24C).

It's a good thing we like it here!

Because it looks like we're staying a few more days.

We had Sherman at the mechanic's for 9:00am, as agreed. We got the bikes off the back, and left Sherman to have his lower control arms installed, as well as the new bell crank for the driver's side that I had bought in the spring and never had installed.

We rode our bikes from the mechanic's to the park where our friend Tioga George was looking for his missing Boid.

August Expenses

Well, I had better stop procrastinating on this!

August was another expensive month. In fact, 2018 is ramping up to be our most expensive year ever since we embarked on this travel based lifestyle in 2007!

Mostly, related to motorhome expenses. Sherman treated us really well the first ten years, with only minimal basic maintenance type of expenses. And, it helped that I was able to perform a lot of the repairs myself. But this year there has been a lot of stuff, starting with the break down we had in Mexico.

Meeting Tioga George!

They were calling for a warm day, so we got a fairly early start on our hike up Whistler's Canyon. Plus, we had made plans to meet a special visitor after lunch, so we didn't want to be too late returning from our hike.

I had sort of figured that it was about a 6 mile (10 km) hike, but as we got into it I realized that it would be a little longer than that!

Everything ran perfectly!

We left our fantastic free overnight spot at the trailhead and drove the short distance into town and parked up behind the library to use their fast free wifi internet. One of the things I had to do was to track down what happened to the other control arm we were waiting on for Sherman.

Long story short, it turned out that it had to be shipped from a different warehouse, and that warehouse was located in Indiana. Even though I had ordered it through Amazon, it was a 3rd party supplier and they made an error by only sending one tracking number.

Into the United States for a few days

Wow... we loved this area between Greenwood and Osoyoos, British Columbia. Just gorgeous scenery.

We stayed in the supposedly $10 a night municipal campground in Greenwood. The sign said that someone would be by to collect the fee... but nobody ever showed up. So we left. Don't feel too guilty about it though... we donated $10 to their library for some used books. And really, if you're not going to come and collect the money, then we don't have a lot of sympathy for your loss! It was just dry camping anyhow... no hookups, so we didn't cost them anything by staying there.

Movin' on down the road...

We said goodbye to friends Betty and Jim yesterday morning, after Betty made us delicious omelettes for breakfast! They sure looked after us... thanks guys!

Again, we did not drive far. Our destination was the "smallest city in British Columbia"... Greenwood, population 708.

There were still bugs from the Yukon plastered on there!

We had breakfast together at Jim and Betty's place. Ruth made some pancakes and we brought over a jug of our coveted real Canadian maple syrup to share with them.

Then, we had a walking tour of their 10 acre property here beside the Kettle River and then set out in their car to have a look at some of the sites to see in the Christina Lake area.

Arrived in time for happy hour!

We woke up to a bit of a smoky day in Castlegar, but we decided to go to a park and get a bike ride in. Not much to see in the downtown area, but we did enjoy the riverfront path and a visit to Zuckerberg Island.

After lunch, we drove to the Christina Lake area, still heading west on highway 3 towards Osoyoos.

Spent some more money

I'm not looking forward to adding up our August expense report later on today! It was another costly month! And we added to it again yesterday.

We drove from Salmo to Castlegar yesterday, as we are slowly making our way west to Osoyoos.

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!