Day 3

Day 3, Tuesday, September 25, 2014

We slept until around 8 this morning, I think we were both tired. Great full breakfast at the hotel. Cooked to order and served to us at a table.

After breakfast, we headed back to Baker Street. Heidi did her deal with the woman at the gift shop for American dollars to Canadian dollars. We then wandered the street since most of the shops had been closed when we were there last night. Found a few things that had to come home with me, a gift for my grand daughter and another magnet that I liked better than the one I bought yesterday.

We then headed out for our scenic drive up the shore of Kootenay Lake and then Arrow Lake. There's still a lot of haze in the air from the Washington wildfires, so the definition of mountain pictures is not all that could be desired. The disappointing thing about this drive is that there are not a lot of places to pull over and enjoy the views of the lake. But we kept trying.

Wildlife spotting: we saw a lynx and her baby! The mother was running across the highway to her baby—we were just pulling out from an overlook, so were not going fast.

We weren't in any particular hurry, I had forgotten about the ferry schedule. When we thought to check it, we discovered that it would be tight to make the next ferry and we would have an hour's wait if we missed. But we made it! Just. Here's a picture of the traffic on the ferry. Ordinary passenger cars. Motorcycles. HUGE logging trucks. Another huge double bottom truck—no idea what his cargo was.

Once across Upper Arrow Lake, it was on to Revelstoke, our destination for tonight. We're staying at the Best Western Plus, a brand new and very nice hotel. Dumped our stuff off and went down to walk by the Columbia River. Found a bench to sit on and noticed this big bend in the river. We later discovered while downtown that this was the famous Big Eddy and that's what Revelstoke used to be called.

We had asked at the desk for recommendations as to where to have dinner. She recommended a couple of places, one of which sounded quite interesting and had an outdoor patio. The Village Idiot Bar & Grill—now how can you resist a place with a name like that? You should have seen the names of the menu items—they were a riot. I had “We found Nemo and he's delicious!” Very good fish tacos and a delicious salad.

We have been writing down all the interesting names and things we've been seeing. Unfortunately, that notebook has gone missing. Maybe it's hiding with Nemo. All I can remember at the moment was a stop sign that said
“Whoa!”, Whole School (as opposed to Half School?) Canadians seem to have a great sense of humor when naming things.

Time to rest up for our big adventure tomorrow.