Sunday ; Moosomin to Swift Current, Saskatchewan
Cold, extremely windy, overcast and light rain this morning in Moosomin, extremely windy on the highway, still windy but sunny and warmer in Swift Current.
We were out of our room this morning about 10 AM. I spent about fifteen minutes or so “discussing” the motel’s “pricing error” with the desk clerk who was unable to rectify because he “lacked authority” and the general manager neither works on weekends nor is available to her staff by telephone. OK ... I’ll just take it up with Motel 6’s head office management, (which I did this evening, by e-mail) ! I found it baffling and unacceptable that I presented a printed copy of my reservation confirmation upon check-in yesterday afternoon, and this morning they presented me with a bill that charged over $20 more than the confirmed reservation. By the time I refilled the minivan with fuel at a nearby Esso station and was pulling out of town it was 10:30 AM.
We continued westbound on Trans-Canada Hwy. 1. We stopped for lunch at a Flying J just before reaching Regina. After Regina and Moose Jaw Joanne drove for about an hour from the middle of nowhere to Herbert (I wonder if they still sell development lots in that town for one dollar ? !) while I napped. We arrived at Motel 6 in Swift Current at 4 PM.
We watched Tony Shalhoub’s Breaking Bread series on CNN while we ate dinner, then watched Sister Wives, one of the shows we watch regularly.
Monday ; Swift Current
Sunny and cold in the morning, warming slightly in the afternoon. A non-driving rest day in Swift Current. Slept late this morning. Well ... except for having to take Apollo out at 7 AM to relieve himself. At 12:30 PM we went out to refill the minivan with fuel at Canadian Tire Fuel Bar beside Motel 6, then shopping for a few groceries at Dollarama and Co-op MarketPlace, then take-out lunch at Bar Burrito, all in the shopping mall across the street from Canadian Tire Fuel Bar.
In the afternoon I received an e-mail from the General Manager of Motel 6 in Moosomin regarding yesterday’s pricing error. She met my demands for an apology and prompt refund of amount of pricing error, and provided a somewhat convoluted explanation of how error occurred. <shrug> OK ... I guess.
After a leisurely lunch in the comfort of our motel room, Apollo and I had a long snooze. The rest of the afternoon was spent reading the newspaper and working on my laptop, updating credit card transaction data, writing my journal, doomscrolling on Bluesky, etc.
At 6:30 PM we went out for an exercise walk with Apollo then drove to Kusina Swift Current, a nearby Filipino restaurant chosen by Joanne, to get some take-out food for supper. Joanne is in charge of food while we travel, whether it’s buying or preparing something to eat for lunch in the car, or restaurants to dine in or get take-out to have in motel rooms.
Well ... <blink blink> ... that was not anywhere near as good a meal as we were expecting !
Tuesday ; Swift Current, Saskatchewan to Lethbridge, Alberta
Sunny and +4° C this morning as we were leaving Swift Current at 10 AM, sunny and 9° C when we arrived in Lethbridge at 3:15 PM (6¼ hr., time zone change again).
We continued westbound on Trans-Canada Hwy. 1 to Medicine Hat, Alberta where we stopped at Superstore to buy some groceries and refill the car with fuel. After that we drove one freeway exit further and went to the Visitor Information Centre where we ate lunch in the car in the parking lot. And used their washrooms. And Apollo got to have an unleashed / “free range” shit in their small, fenced dog park. HA HA HA !
At Medicine Hat we left TCH 1, which heads NW towards Calgary, and turned onto Crowsnest Hwy. 3 which follows a more southerly route across half of Alberta and most of BC. It’s our previous “home road”. Our home at Riverside RV Park Resort near Keremeos was on Crowsnest Hwy. 3. We’ll be passing by there in a couple of days.
Crowsnest Hwy. 3, a two lane undivided highway, is a much more difficult road to drive than the four lane divided TCH 1, but for much of the year (fall, winter, spring !) Hwy. 3 is likely to have much better weather than the more northerly TCH 1, especially on the Coquihalla Hwy. (a.k.a. Highway thru Hell) stretch from Kamloops to Hope, BC.
As we arrived at Motel 6 in Lethbridge I saw that the fuel station across the street had a very good price on fuel, so before checking into the motel I refilled the car with fuel again.
<blink blink> What the hell happened to the Canadian stock market today ? ! ? Was that the result of the federal budget release today ? ? ?
We spent the evening channel switching between CBC and CNN, watching the analyses of the Canadian federal budget and the results of the US gubernatorial and mayoralty elections.
Wednesday ; Lethbridge, Alberta to Cranbrook, British Columbia
Overcast, +2° C. this morning in Lethbridge. Raining, +2° C. this afternoon in Cranbrook.
We were out of Motel 6 in Lethbridge this morning at 10 AM. We continued westbound on Crowsnest Hwy. 3, crossing from Alberta into British Columbia through the Crowsnest Pass around noon. We stopped at the Visitor Information Centre in Sparwood, BC to eat lunch in the car.
We arrived in Cranbrook around 2:30 PM, but did not go straight to our motel. We stopped at Superstore to buy a few grocery items, then drove to Cranbrook’s dog park to give Apollo an opportunity to roam around off leash for awhile. Leaving Superstore we had a close call with the minivan’s electronic operated sliding side door, coming very close to injuring (or worse !) Apollo. It left both of us very upset for a couple of hours. We checked into Motel 6 around 4 PM.
Fifteen hundred kilometres down, a thousand to go !
We ate supper while watching Amazing Race, then later in the evening we watched Survivor.
Thursday ; Cranbrook
Sunny, cold in the morning, warming in the afternoon.
By design we slept late this morning, then got a very slow start to the day. Shortly after noon we left the motel to take Apollo to the dog park, then run some errands before having a very late lunch back at the motel.
We bought a few items at Dollar Tree, refilled with fuel at Superstore Fuel Bar, then bought take-out lunch at That’s A Wrap. We returned to Motel 6, and had our wrap sandwiches with soup. A few days ago we bought some tetra packs of ready to heat and eat soups.
Today I (and 266 others) received an e-mail from a life lease seniors’ condominium in Southdale, advertising an open house yesterday, and threatening to remove us from their waitlist because we did not respond. This is the first communication we have received from this development since expressing our interest almost five years ago !
HMPH ! Pretty slim pickings on TV on Thursday evening in Cranbrook !
Friday ; Cranbrook to Osoyoos, British Columbia
Mostly cloudy, temperature ranging from -4° C to +11° C today, depending on elevation.
Last year we took three days to get from Cranbrook to Hope, stopping overnight in Christina Lake (near Grand Forks) and Princeton. This year, to trim one day off the journey, and reduce motel expenses a little, we planned to take two days to get from Cranbrook to Hope, stopping overnight in Osoyoos. <sigh> That was a mistake. Today was too long a day of driving, leaving Cranbrook at 10 AM and arriving in Osoyoos at 5 PM, dark already for about half an hour. Eight hours on the road (another time zone change today), on Crowsnest Hwy. 3 which is a difficult drive, non-divided two lanes, non-stop hills and curves from Cranbrook all the way to Hope.
Next spring, on the way back home, I think we’ll try taking the Trans-Canada Hwy. 1 all the way from Victoria to Winnipeg, which would mean Hope to Kamloops on the Coquihalla (Highway Thru Hell), then to Revelstoke and Calgary.
After checking out of Cranbrook’s Motel 6 we stopped at the dog park for a few minutes to give Apollo an opportunity for a “free range shit”. “WOO-HOO” says Apollo !
Despite having travelled this route many times in the past, and having an up to date GPS, I missed a fork in the road shortly after Salmo, routing us through Trail and Rossland on Hwy. 3B, instead of through Castlegar on Hwy. 3 which is what I had intended. Not a significant difference in distance, but certainly a more challenging section of an already difficult to drive highway. With higher elevations, and our first exposure to (a lot of) snow !
We stopped at Save-On-Foods in Creston to buy some advertised specials. We stopped to have lunch in Trail. The plan had been to stop for lunch in Castlegar, but somebody missed a turn ! We stopped at Mobil in Grand Forks to refill the minivan with fuel.
When we arrived at our motel in Osoyoos, right at the junction of Crowsnest Hwy. 3 running east/west from Medicine Hat, Alberta to Hope, BC, and Hwy. 97, running north/south all the way from the northern Okanagan region, to the Canadian/U.S. border at Osoyoos, and then beyond to Weed, California, I stepped out of the car to register at the motel office and ... <GAG> ... was met with a horrible stench of ... manure ? Or sewage ? WTF ? Well ... this is new ! We lived nearby for fifteen years and never experienced this stench before ! It was already dark, so I couldn’t see a source of the odour. It churned my stomach, and I abdicated responsibility for unloading stuff from the car, and walking the dog, to Joanne. Thank you, my dear ... I’m really sensitive to odours, whether foul or pleasant (like perfumes).
At 9 PM I took Apollo outside. <sniff sniff> HMPH ... foul odour is gone ! Wonder what that was ?
Saturday ; Osoyoos to Hope, British Columbia
Sunny, cold in the morning in Osoyoos, cool in the late afternoon in Hope.
We departed our motel in Osoyoos at 10 AM (no odour outside this morning), continuing westbound on Crowsnest Hwy. 3, through the Similkameen Valley to Keremeos and beyond to Riverside RV Park Resort, our summer home from October, 2006 to April, 2021. I was reminded of how much I loved this area the first time we saw it in 2005. And I still do ! The Similkameen Valley from Osoyoos to Keremeos to Princeton is one of the most beautiful areas in Canada, and the world, in my opinion.
We drove slowly through Riverside RV Park Resort, remembering how beautiful it was in its early days (2006 / 2007), and how it slowly evolved into what it is today ; a trashy trailer park ! <shrug> Another chapter of our lives closed, just at the right time ... for us ! I again said goodbye to (the memory/spirit of) Ozzie a.k.a. “the dead neighbour’s dog” ... the nickname we gave him when we inherited him upon the death of our next door neighbour Gord. His (Ozzie’s) ashes are sprinkled in Riverside’s dog park, officially named in memory and honour of Gord, the driving force behind the creation of that dog park. Joanne again said goodbye to (the memory/spirit of) Emma the cat, whose ashes are sprinkled in the raised garden bed of our previous lot in the park.
We continued westbound, passing through the small town of Hedley, past Bromley Rock Provincial Park, a favourite place of ours, and into Princeton where we stopped to buy a few grocery items at Save-On-Foods.
As the elevation rose going into Manning Provincial Park there was some snow on the ground. We stopped at Manning Park Resort to eat our lunch in the car. We arrived in Hope around 3 PM. We checked into Windsor Motel, wondering why it was so much more expensive than a year ago. OH ... totally renovated ! Very nice ! Just at dusk (4:45 PM !) we took Apollo for a leisurely walk through the lovely large municipal park across the street.
As we drove and reminisced today, suddenly a light bulb went off in Joanne’s head. During the many years when we had a summer side hustle delivering and setting up RV trailers (Similkameen Trailer Towing) we occasionally took clients’ trailers to Osoyoos to be stored over the winter. Before winterizing them and putting them into the large RV storage yard in Osoyoos we would empty the waste storage tanks at an RV dump station in Osoyoos. It was adjacent to the Osoyoos municipal sewage treatment plant. Right near the motel we stayed at last night !
Some manner of malfunction at the plant yesterday afternoon / evening ? ! ?
2200 kilometres thus far, 300 kilometres and a ferry ride left to go !
DSK
No comments:
Post a Comment