At Ballingham we renewed some of our medications at Walgreens, visited a Mall but didn't buy anything and went out for Debby's birthday. The manager at Ballingham RV where we were staying recommended Anthony's a sea food restaurant. Although Ballingham had several three diamond restaurant's listed in the AAA, for some reason, we ignored these and made a reservation at Anthony's when we walked by on a tour of the harbor. Ballingham RV had a modem hook up in the office and I foolishly looked up the restaurant in Zagats before we went to dinner. It turned out to be a part of a chain and had a rating of 19 for food, we went anyway. The meal was nice I would give it a 22. Debby had Ahi tuna that was prepared rare to her liking that alone rates a restaurant a 25 or better but my salmon was a little over cooked.You would be surprised at how many fine restaurant's either don't have a clue about tuna or are careless and over cook it. Anybody can make tuna steak well done only an attentive knowledgeable chef can do it properly. Tuna steak Ahi or Yellow fin are usually sushi grade which means they can be eaten raw. Tuna steak should never be eaten well done in a restaurant or at home. If you want tuna well done get it from a can. Albacore which is sold as steak is better reserved for cans because it isn't sushi grade and probably shouldn't be eaten rare but I am not sure why other then it doesn't taste as good. For starters Debby had a salad and I a cup of clam chowder. For dessert we both had melted chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream which was very enjoyable. We sat and drank our coffee as the sun slowly set over the harbor in the west. It was a very pleasant evening.
The next morning we left Ballingham and drove to the Canadian Border. I declared my Bear Spray because you can't take pepper spray or firearms into Canada. The spray was in the trailer so thc Customs Officer instructed me to park and bring the spray and my ID into the office. In the office they only wanted to confirm that the can had bear spray written on it. I am not sure I understand the difference between a can labeled bear spray and one labeled pepper spray. Why one is allowed and the other isn't. Especially since bear spray is by far the stronger of the two. When I stopped for gas in Canada the gas station was advertising "Pepper Spray sold here". My father would have shook his head and said "Vair Vase" ( Who Knows) as if to say nobody knows why governments or people do non sensible things.
We stopped for the night in A British Columbia Provincial Park just outside Kamloops, CA. Lac Le Jun was a pretty park with a nice lake and no hookups. We set up the trailer and went for a short walk which ended up being five or six miles around the lake. We had seen a sign that said the loop trial took three hours. We hadn't planned to walk for three hours and were planning to turn back but when we got to the far side of the lake it looked shorter to continue on the loop rather then return the way we came. It wasn't.
Later that evening a park employee came by for our payment. The Trailer Life Directory claimed that this park accepted Master Card. He said it didn't. When I asked about American dollars he said he didn't know the exchange rate, I asked a self answering question about a check on a non Canadian bank and paid the fee $17 in American dollars. I may have been had. The last time we had been in Canada we got by with American dollars and Master Card. The next day we stopped at a bank and got $133 Canadian dollars for a $100 traveler's check.
That night we stopped just outside Revelstoke to visit Mount Revelstoke National Park. We got there too late to drive the scenic Meadows in the Sky road so we bought an Annual National Park Pass, with our credit card and went for a short hike on the mountain.
When we returned to Meadows on the Mountain to drive the scenic road and possibly get a look at the scenic and famous Rogers Pass we had no luck. The road is a steep winding 26 kilometers with several cutbacks to the summit. We only managed 16 before we reached the barricade. On June 5th the road still had snow blocking it above16 kilometers. We tried walking and walked about 2 kilometers before we encountered the snow. As we progressed up the mountain the snow became deeper and walking became more difficult until we decided we had had enough and turned back. We had probably walked an additional 2 kilometers before turning back without seeing Rogers Pass.
The next morning we drove to the other side of Revelstoke, walked on a boardwalk in Glacier National Park called the Skunk Cabbage Trail and proceeded to another campground. On the way we passed another boardwalk trail but it was closed due to snow as were the Glacier campgrounds and almost all of the trails. After setting up the trailer we drove to the Rogers Pass Center which was in the pass just beyond the Summit.
The ranger told us about a nice open trail about five miles down the road. We went there but after seeing a grizzly bear feeding by the side of the road about a 100 yards from the trailhead we decided we didn't want to walk there. We returned to the Rogers Pass Summit and walked the abandoned rail trail passing the remains of the abandoned snow sheds along the way. A snow shed is a shed that a train or a car, we drove through several, is able to drive through an avalanche while the snow goes harmlessly overhead. The trail leads back to the Rogers Pass Center so we stopped in and told the ranger about the bear. We also walked at another trail by the side of a stream on our way back to the campground. When we left the campground heading for our next stop we passed the location of our hike and a black or grizzly bear cub was trying to get over the divider on the other side of the road from that path.
The Canadian Pacific Railroad afraid of competition from the American railroad companies was desperate to find a pass through the Rockies. They sent Colonel Rogers and a team of men to find one. They even promised Rogers to name the pass after him if he found a pass. He found it and they named the pass after him but he never cashed the $5000 check they paid him.
Having his name on the pass forever was payment enough. They built their railroad and completed the line laying claim to all Western Canadian business. The Pass however was a constant cause of trouble. After an avalanche in the early 1900 killed 62 workers they gave up the above ground line through the pass and tunneled below the pass through the Mackenzie Mountain. In 1956 the Canadian Government constructed Trans Canada #1 an automobile and truck highway through the pass. The highway is kept open all year by a road crew. When they see an area that looks unstable they temporarily close the road bring in the Royal Canadian Mounted Artillery and force the avalanche to occur at the time of their choice. In fact a sign at one of the trails cautions hikers about unexploded shells.
After an encounter with a Stellar Jays that was not intimidated by anybody and didn't fly off, we returned to the Canyon Hot Springs Campground and sat in the 104 degree mineral waters from the springs and watched the scenery.
While the water comes hot from the ground you would never know it as it's like sitting in a hot tub. I guess I'm a purist who would like to sit in the actual spring like the Native Americans did. (In case some of you are troubled by my use of Native Americans in Canada and believe I should call them Native Canadians remember Canada is part of North America. Canadians call them Aboriginals like in Australia. I guess it's a British thing. By the way they have no problem that we usurped the word "America" they call us Americans even though they are also Americans)
The scenery at the hot springs is enhanced by these Hummingbirds feeders.
Next: Lake Louise