We have lots of relatives in Colville and Kettle Falls Washington. We stopped at Buena Vista where two of my aunts, Lindell and Shandon, live. I brought along my guitar and played music for over an hour. I had a wonderful time playing and I think everyone there enjoyed themselves. We then moved on to a campground in Kettle Falls and cousins Benny and Monty and his wife Marilyn dropped by for a visit. We met up with Judy’s sister, Sonja and Jack at the campground and we spent the evening planning our trip to Alaska.
Thursday morning we took off for Canada. We got a good early start, we were underway by nine. Things went smoothly to Laurier at the Canadian border about 30 miles away. Since some of my tools and computer are made in China and other countries I stopped and took the precaution of registering the serial numbers with the US Customs Office. That took about an hour. Then we buzzed down the road 50 feet to the Canadian Customs and they directed us to the side and gave us a thorough once over. It was nearly lunch when we caught up with Sonja and Jack at Cascade Falls. We did some hiking around the falls and I got some really nice photos of the torrent of water gushing through that rugged canyon. What a spectacular sight.
That night we camped at Kekuli Bay Provincial Park, in Vernon, British Columbia. It is on Long Lake which is a sizable lake in itself but nothing like Lake Okanogan the home of Ogopogo, a Loch Ness style lake monster. I think we are safe here. We are probably 100 feet above the water. The original natives called him “N’ha-a-tik” and were in the practice of bringing a small animal with them in their canoes and would throw it in the water to appease him. Eye witnesses claim that Ogopogo is about 20 feet long with a heavy snake’s body and the head of a goat or horse. There is something strange about this monster that makes him impossible to photograph.
Friday we had to deal with changing some of our money into Canadian. They are very close to the same value this summer. The hard part was finding a bank that was open and somewhere we could park a couple sizable RV’s. We finally found a bowling alley parking lot and walked to the bank in Kamloops, BC. We bought our first Diesel fuel today for about $3.50 a US gallon in US dollars. Gasoline is about $4.20. We are about 1/5 of the way from Washington to the Alaska Border. Our next big town will be Prince George, BC
The weather is good and we are all having a good time.
Love to all from Gary, Judy, Sonja and Jack.
