Day One

Yesterday was another world. This morning dawned wet, dark, cold and foggy. In other words, we were back to normal.  Rick was obsessed with being on the 8:50AM ferry. As you can see, we made it easily.

When we got off the ferry at Vancouver, it was clear again and stayed dry all through the day. We passed through the suburban area of Vancouver and finally the suburbs gave way to more open countryside about Chilliwack where we saw our first snow on Chilliwack Mountain.

By about 3PM, we stopped for gas on the route into the mountains and I saw a Huskie
truck stop with cafe.

Since we were feeling a bit peckish, we went inside for a cuppa. The lady
was determined that we were going to have something with our coffee, and she dangled a butter tart
in front of Rick, and then warmed the darn thing up and he succumbed. He has a serious weakness for butter tarts, especially when home made. This one was different. The lady must have been Scottish because they were filled with currants and not raisins. Rick said it tasted like a cross between a mince meat tart and a butter tart. Now if you are not Canadian and do not have a serious obsession with butter tarts, and in fact of you are not Canadian, then you probably don't even KNOW what a butter tarts is. It is sort of like a pecan tart without the pecans. And raisins instead. And it is very good in the
afternoon about 3PM when one feels a little peckish. We were so peckish that when I got around to taking a photo of Rick's butter tart and my lemon cake with blueberries, they looked like this:

From there, we took 2 1/2 hours to pass over the mountains.

We went up and over Alison Pass at 4480 feet and there we saw our first snow on the ground.

On the eastern slope as we dropped down into the Okanagan, the land changed again, from wet and green to dry and yellow-brown, firs changed to pines and then open grassland.

Right on target, we arrived at our camp ground at Keremeos, a historic gold mining
area. What a delight this place is, positioned at the foot of a very interesting mountain, it has grassy parking areas, all the amenities and is one of the few campgrounds open past October 1st.

Tomorrow we pass through the Okanagan, which is fruit and wine country, and then over
the next mountain range. This route actually has three mountain ranges to cross before we
finish with the Rocky Mountains and land on the Alberta plains. Stay tuned, and for now, good night!