It's Been A While
 
Well, it's been a few days since I added to the travel blog and there is a fair bit to cover.

Car Hire (Day 1)
It would be lovely if everything were perfect. Well it was - almost!. We collected the hire car on Monday.  The Alamo/Enterprise/National representative was extremely helpful and being such nice people we were 'up-graded' to a Chevrolet Trax. Think it was more to do with the period of hire and look of indignation, when the prospect of having to take the car for an oil change at some point during our trip was mentioned, that swung it!

Anyhow, we collected from the downstairs car park at Canada Place and all was good - it was a brand new car with only something like 600 miles (or kilometers?) on the clock. At the start of our journey, I noticed a clicking sound - the kind you get when you have a stone in a tyre. Too busy concentrating on getting used to the car and the roads, I decided to ignore it for a while. However, after about 15 minutes I was becomming really irritated and so  stopped the car. A simple stone - oh no! It was a nail right in the middle of the tyre tread. Well we just had to get it sorted before we hit the main highway. A call to the emergency number and we were off to find another Enterprise outlet. Not a simple task without a sat-nav. We bought a map at a garage but when the emergency contact lady on the end of the phone line started to say things like 'just go to diddly diddly dot com and the following page', I knew we were in for a difficult time! Bring back maps and instruct youngsters on how to use them!!

Eventually, we managed to navigate to the appointed place where they were very helpful. Tyre couldn't be fixed as the garage were too busy to look at it ill the end of the day (no good for us!). They offered a lower grade car (absolutely not - it had spots of rust!) or we could go somewhere else close by where they had another SUV. So that's what we did and ended up with a Jeep Patriot.

Happy days! We set off, some 3+ hours later than planned, for Osoyoos (just north of the USA border).






Problem sorted (we thought) and all was well - until the petrol light came on. I forgot it's a 2.4 ltr. We were litereally in the middle of nowhere. Some 60 kilometers from civilisation (the next town-Princeton) and we had travelled some 70 kilometers since we passed the last gas station. Don't Panic!!  Some chance - By this time, I was well into the emergency planning (how to keep warm and safe from bears etc.). I slowed down to get some more distance out of a pretty empty tank (about another 20 kilometers) and we were saved! We came across a holiday 'Resort' which was well used to being asked if they had any spare gas and had turned it into a litle side-line - they sold us a 'jerry can' of fuel which enabled us to get to Princeton (the local gas station on the way was of course closed)!

So, after an eventful and very tiring trip, we arived in Osoyoos at about 8.30pm - just in time to head straight off to a local chineese for take-away.

Time for a picture interlude:

Messey Motel & Changed Plans (Day 2)

Motel was OK and the town was quite scenic set on one side of a massive lake. After a spot of breakfast we headed to the boarder. It has to be said that my decision to try to drive straight across the boarder without stopping was not particularly welcomed by boarder control. However, on discovering they were just dealing with a couple of British idiots, they decided to let us through and we proceeded on the long drive to Wallace.

Wallace had a pretty good write-up and we were scheduled to stay for 2 nights, but for us it entirely failed to impress on any level. The motel was crap. We were allocated a room but they couldn't find the keys; allocated another that was under refurb and full of paint pots; allocated a third which we only just managed to get into because the door was jammed. When we pulled into the place, the sign said 'no vacancies' so I'm not sure how they managed to re-allocate rooms to such an extent?

Another Town, Another Motel (Day 3)
Wallace looked so tired and depressing that we cut short the stay after one night and 'pushed-on' toward a place called Salmon having quickly arranged a 3 night stay in a Super 8 motel.

A long drive again but we arived in good time to enjoy a late afternoon in a local bistro sampling the local wine & beer. A good nights sleep and we are reflecting on the last few days (1,239 kilometers).  Weather has been superb and scenery spectacular:

The town of Salmon is nestled as if in a bowl surrounded by snow-capped mountains. We think we will rest-up here very well indeed!