I had a few days off over the weekend and an invitation to meet with some friends down near Cranbrook, BC at the St. Mary’s River B&B, a brand-new facility run by friends Doug and Dale Martin.
It is located in a wonderfully scenic spot on the banks of the St. Mary’s river in Wycliffe.
We spent a couple of days visiting and catching up on the news, while enjoying a pig roasted on a spit, and a few cool beverages.
The weather was perfect for the get-together and it was good to catch up with old friends.
They had a lot of friends and relatives visiting, so I was happy to stay out in the camper with Hailey, the travelling kitten.
After dropping other friends off at the airport in Cranbrook so they could fly their light plane back to Calgary, I headed out under some threatening skies.
There was some short-lived heavy rain and some hail to dampen the dust, but it cleared nicely for most of the trip.
My truck alerted me to a low tire on the right rear, so I jumped out for a look and it was going down so fast that I hardly had a chance to pick a safer flatter spot to answer the big question! The big question was whether or not I could get access to the spare tire with the camper on and the tailgate down? After waiting out yet another rain shower, (and reading the directions), I found out that I could indeed get the spare off, though I had to use a small wrench to spin the tire-lowering rod instead of the tire iron.
After that minor excitement I rolled in to Crawford Bay, where the free ferry across the lake is billed as the ‘longest free ferry crossing in the world’. The small town was absolutely packed with people as they were hosting the Starbelly Jam Music Festival! It was about to end, so the lineups at the ferry terminal were hours long instead of minutes. But I was in no particular rush, so in due time we were aboard for the 40 minute crossing on the ‘MV Osprey 2000’
I was impressed that my Tomtom GPS unit kept on course, even while on the ferry!
A nice lake view camp spot was located on the far shore in time to watch an impressive show of lightning across the lake.
In the morning, a tire repair shop in Nelson patched the flat tire and put the spare back in place.
From there the route was northbound through Slocan into Nakusp, where another music festival was just over, threatening more huge ferry lineups across Arrow Lake into Revelstoke. Fortunately, I found a backwoods hotspring to soak for a while until the lineups had somewhat died down.
It was good to get back into the truck camper again after spending my last few months on the road last spring in the 5th wheel.
Plans are to head out to another lake to join other friends next weekend, this time back in the fifth wheel!
It’s looking like sometime before this year is out, I will be free to finally start travelling full-time, without interruptions to go back to work. Really looking forward to that, I must say!
Till then, keep on reading!
Just started catching up with your travels and I can see I have some reading ahead of me. My wife and I fulltime, in the south for the winters and along the Eastern Slopes in the summer. We have a place near Cremona and venture out from there looking for new trails to travel with our horses.
ReplyDeletetravel safe
Just started catching up with your travels and I can see I have some reading ahead of me. My wife and I fulltime, in the south for the winters and along the Eastern Slopes in the summer. We have a place near Cremona and venture out from there looking for new trails to travel with our horses.
ReplyDeletetravel safe