Day 16 - Sicamous to Woodbury Point - 170 Miles

Today did not turn out anywhere close to the way we had discussed and planned it. First of all, we had planned on delivering the bug-splattered rig into downtown Sicamous to a truck-wash facility that we had seen as we passed through town. Next, we planned on heading east toward the town of Golden in hopes of getting halfway to the city of Calgary before cocktail hour. Well, that didn’t happen.

What happened was this: I had become aware that the town of Nelson, which you may remember if you’re a fan of Steve Martin’s wonderful movie, “Roxanne,” was a little more than a day’s journey to the south of us; and Nelson was just one of those double-checked items on my bucket list, and has been for nearly three decades.

I didn’t decide to attempt the jog south immediately. I was just a little put off by the existence of a lake ferry that had to be navigated if one traveled between Sicamous and Nelson. If you didn’t take the ferry, you had to double or triple the mileage traveled as you made a big circle to either the east or the west. I decided it was time for advice.

So, Canadian map in hand, I marched up to the KOA office to try and find someone to advise me about the route and the difficulties inherent with taking a 32-foot rig on the lake ferry. At the office, the owner told me, “no big deal, people take their recreational vehicles on the ferry all the time.”

Feeling more confident, I put a smile on my face and marched back toward camp. However, before I got there, I ran across Tom and Monica, two tent campers who I had met the previous evening, and with whom I had developed a pleasant rapport as we discussed our various travel adventures through the years.

Tom and Monica are Canadians, so I decided to run my idea by them as well and see if they agreed with the camp owner. Turns out that they enthusiastically recommended taking the ferry and promised it would not only be easy to pull off, but would be a memorable journey in the bargain.

At this point Concetta did not know of my plans to abandon the direct route to Calgary, and take the adventuresome scenic bypass by way of Steve Martin’s memorable town of Nelson. The day before I had mentioned Nelson to Concetta, but she wasn’t buying the ferry crossing idea.

But now, with my new-found information AND enthusiasm for the project, I just quietly, and quite unilaterally, made plans to head for Nelson anyway and surprise her.

Conveniently forgetting about the truck wash altogether, I packed up the camp gear and we were soon on our way east on Canadian Highway 1. The bugs were just going to have to stay right where bug fate had plastered them.

Our first stop – since we’re ALWAYS looking for stops – was the “Three Valley Gap Hotel,” a spectacular red-roofed structure that looked like the old railroad hotels of the 19th century. If the wonderful (old) new architecture wasn’t enough, the roadside sign promised antique cars, a ghost town, a restaurant, and limitless shopping possibilities.

It sounded like a great place to stop for “half a mo,” as the British actor, Terry Thomas was fond of saying, do some walking, take some photos, and see the many and varied sights. We parked the rig down the road from the Hotel, and hoofed it over. To our amazement, along the way we discovered a half dozen old duffers, ensconced under a canopy, who had brought out their antique machinery and rusty tools to show off to anyone who passed by.

Well, this was right up my alley indeed! Though the tools were mostly junk, it was fun trying to identify them, which I sort of failed at miserably. But having seen the tools, we walked on to tour the Hotel grounds.

The grounds were just charming. And located as it was just to the east of a magnificent lake surrounded by mountain peaks, it felt like we were touring in Switzerland instead of Canada. All the buildings were an eye-catching white with red roofs, which caused them to stand out spectacularly against the azure sky of the Canadian Rockies.

After visiting the Hotel grounds, we visited the souvenir shop looking for that hard-to-resist gift or personal treasure. Naturally, I came away with my usual “been there, seen that t-shirt,” this one with a railroad subject, which was about the only one I could find in my size and favorite fabric. The T says, “Canadian Pacific, the Golden Age of Travel.”

On our way back to the rig, we did stop again and visit with the old guys showing off their restored tractors, small engines, and such. We met a guy named Bob, who told us he had been an aeronautical engineer for Boeing, but had been retired for the past 26 years. Now he spends most of his time just “restoring things.” He’s the guy with the tractor, which he restored.

Back on the Trans Canadian Route 1, we very soon came upon the fork in the road where we had to head straight ahead toward Golden and Calgary, or turn right and take Route 23 to the ferry crossing. I was sort of hoping Concetta wouldn’t notice, but of course she did. I hadn’t even finished the turn and she said, “Going to Nelson, I see.”

Oh, well, the cat was out of the bag. I had to fess up and tell her that I just HAD to see Nelson. Thankfully, she gracefully acquiesced and before long we were pulling up in line to board the ferry. No ferry was present, so I did some scouting around and talked to one of the other folks waiting in line, too. He told me that the ferry would arrive about noon, load up, and then make the 22-minute dash to the other side of the lake.

We were naturally a little bit uncertain about whether they would welcome a 32-foot motor home with open arms, and we went on thinking that right up until the ferry landed and immediately disgorged no less than FIVE 18-wheelers and a whole bunch of other traffic! Okay, well that put that bit of uncertainty to rest.

For anyone who has never been to British Columbia, you are missing one of the great experiences in life. The whole place (not counting the big cities) is like one big park. Huge peaks, tranquil lakes, raging mountain streams, blue skies – they have it all in doses that have been purely astounding us. The two-lane roads are well kept and smooth, and the beautiful scenery crowds in on both sides.

Speaking of roads, here is the one subject that got me into a bit of trouble today. While we were on the ferry I overheard one of a group of motorcyclists telling another group that there were two ways to head toward Nelson. One was Route 23 on which we had arrived at the ferry, and one was Route 31 which, he said, was more scenic, and ran largely by the lake where we had crossed on the ferry.

Remembering that bit of information as we motored off the ferry and down the road, I naturally chose Route 31 when we got to the fork after lunch. Enthusiastically, we headed off into the woods and were basically the ONLY traffic to do so. Of course we didn’t see the motorcyclists as we had stopped before reaching the fork and had lunch at the top of a runaway truck ramp. You might think that a runaway truck ramp was a darn strange place to have lunch, but when you think about the fact that it was at the very top of a long incline, and afforded terrific views without any traffic, you can see why I chose it.

Anyway, so here we are, heading off into the forest without another sole to keep us company. No one came up behind wanting to pass, and no one drove by in the opposite direction. After about forty-five minutes of smooth sailing on the vacant highway, we suddenly left the tarmac and began rolling on hard-packed dirt and gravel. Concetta and I looked at each other, both of us wondering if this was just a stretch they were in the process of repairing, or what?

After rolling along for another 15 minutes on the dirt road, with the dishes rattling in the cupboards, we came across a farmstead between us and a small lake. Well, I wheeled around and drove right into their driveway. The husband was working on his car as we approached.

I got out of the truck and walked over to where the guy was working, and was about halfway there when the guy’s wife yelled at me from the house to drive slower next time, because I got dust on her newly-washed laundry. Oops! Anyway, so I questioned the guy about just how much dirt road I could expect before getting to the next town, which happened to be Kaslo.

”Well,” he said, “it’s dirt all the way to Kaslo. About fifty miles.”

I was dumbfounded. Surely the motorcyclists had not gone this way at all. “Is it hard-packed and smooth like the last part we drove?”

The guy kinda looked at me, then at the road, then back at me. “Well,” he said, “mostly. Some rough parts, but you know the logging trucks use that road.”

Oh great, I thought. Now I have to choose to go back for over an hour and take Route 23, or we have to endure 50 miles of dirt road. But hey, I thought, the dirt road was better than some of the paved roads in Nevada. Maybe we'll just give it a try. “Okay, thanks,” I said, and retraced my path to the rig – but not before asking him to apologize to his wife for the dusty entrance.

And so on we went, wondering all the time if there was any way that those motorcyclists had come this way. Little by little the road started to get rougher and narrower, until at times we traversed sections where two large vehicles would not have been able to pass at all. Narrow, blind corners came came at us aplenty. In some places flooding had narrowed the road even further.

Around every single corner I fully expected to have to slam on the breaks to avoid being crushed by an oncoming logging truck. We hadn’t seen any so far, and fervently hoped that all the loggers were off on Saturdays and sitting in a roadhouse somewhere, but that didn’t mean we wouldn’t see one around the next bend.

Thankfully, holding our breaths for a couple of hours straight must have done the trick, because we never did encounter a logging truck. We did encounter a couple of young deer who darted across the road in front of us, and at one point a bear cub came up to the road edge to say hello.

Finally, after we had been on the dirt road for what seemed like an eternity, we started to run across other humans. First a pickup truck rolled past us going the other way, thankfully on a nice wide portion of the road. Next we ran across a whole crowd of people who had stopped to enjoy a spot where a dam and bridge lay across the river, above which we had been traveling for so long.

At the bridge, we stopped as well to do some walking and to let the brakes cool off on the rig, which I had been smelling for quite a while. From that point it was still going to be another 15 miles or so of dirt road, but by then we were old hands at logging-road bushwhacking and just sat back, exhaled, and enjoyed the rest of the ride.

Eventually, we were able to find a camp about an hour’s drive north of Nelson and succeeded in snagging a terrific spot right on the shore of Kootenay lake. The second half of our day was pretty nerve-racking and tedious, but in the end all’s well that ends well. We have a couple of great neighbors here, tomorrow promises to be bright and sunny for our sojourn around Nelson, and I can’t think of anyplace else I’d rather be right now.

And when you get ready to hit the road, and you set out on your quest for adventure, we wish you exciting destinations and memorable travels from the Davises, the Happy Wanderers.