Beginning of our road trip Kamloops & Jasper. — Jasper, Canada
After the nightmare of getting lost round West Vancouver we ended up setting out later the expected to start our road trip. In the end we set off around 11.30! The weather had turned & I found myself driving through heavy rainfall. After about 2 hours on the road we decided to stop off in a place called Hope. I'm not sure whether it was the rain or the fact that it was off season but there did not seem to be much hope in Hope! There was however a subway & a Dairy Queen but that was about it! We opted for Subway. After our lunch stop we debated whether I should continue driving or whether Caroline should take over. As Caroline wasn't feeling too good we decided that I would continue the driving. This is just as well as about 20 minutes into the trip Caroline found the inside of her eyelids more interesting then the scenery! I will say that at this point I was loving this pretty scenic drive & would like to pay more attention to the mountain, alpine & forest fire views but a) I was on the highway & there were no stopping places, b) I wanted to get through the rain as quickly as possible. As conversation was a bit sparse from sleeping beauty I decided to put the radio on. There are not many radio stations available & those that are have a bit of a weird mix. There was one point where I had mountains on either side of me & rain pouring down when the 'eye of the tiger' was playing! I felt quite empowered rocking along to the Rocky music! After a while I lost the music station & all I could pick up was talk radio, I'm pretty sure they were talking about a tiger & revenge but a) I couldn't work out where in Canada this would of happened there famous for bears not tigers & b) I'm still a bit deaf so not actually sure if that is what they were talking about! After about 400km the petrol gauge was nearing the empty & I hadn't seen a petrol station or services for about a 100km! It was at this point I started to quietly panic. Then I saw a sign for the next petrol station & turned off the highway in search of it! 22km later I came upon the petrol station! After the 22km back to the highway Kamloops was only about 40km away! Lesson to Canada a) provide more service stations/petrol stations b) provide more mile markers to major towns! On arriving in Kamloops we pulled up at an area similar to Lakeside industrial park. Now we had nowhere to stay for the night so we went free wifi searching! I popped into McDonalds loo & their wifi seemed to be down! No point in buying a coffee there then. After driving around a bit we saw a Starbucks & an A&W, both offer free wifi so we chose A&W, here coffee & an apple pie was €2! After some searching we found a Motel for the evening. Now we weren't sure where this motel was so I went to ask the helpful staff behind the counter, they did not have a scooby do where the motel was & pointed me in the direction of a local trucker. He seemed to be providing directions to a lot of different people & was happy to tell us where to go! On getting to the motel they upgraded us to a room with a king size bed & jacuzzi bath! I wasn't even aware that Motels offered this type of upgrade but apparently they do. So it was Friday night & we were in a new town. What to do with our night? A trip to the local Wendy's for dinner (they do Jacket Potatoes & salad!) & a load of washing! We do know how to enjoy ourselves! On getting into the bed we realised that it was massive & we could both stretch out without ever making contact! Another day another 500km to drive! Caroline took the morning stint which was great as it meant I had a chance to really look around & enjoy the views & not just the road. We made it to our halfway point Blue River. We saw signs for a river safari which looked great fun, however we got there & it was closed for the season, not even the toilets were open! We had missed it by a week! The only place open was a petrol station with a cafe attached. I will say however that this was the prettiest service station views I have seen (sorry Rache it beats the one on the way to the Lake District). Whilst here I checked my emails as I had emailed lots of B&B's in Jasper to try & get us a bed for the night. One reply was from the owner of Bear Hill Bedrooms called Dale. Elk had been spotted in the garden as it is rutting season. We replied confirming the reservation & then speculated on what type of person Dale was. Caroline opted for a young hunk & I though a retired man in his 60's. After a coffee & a sandwich I took over for the next driving stint. It seemed that as soon as I got behind the wheel the rain started again & not long after sleeping beauty was off looking at the insides of her eyelids. Again the scenery was great & the Radio stations interesting! We arrived in Jasper about 4.30 & easily found our B&B. A witch was guarding the front door which was open so we went in. We were immediately greeted by our host Dale, a 60 something female & not a hunk. Looks like we were both wrong! Our Saturday night in Jasper was a bit more lively the our previous night as we walked around the very compact but picturesque town of Jasper. It was kind of hard to find somewhere to eat as over half the restaurants seemed to have closed for the season. After an hour of walking around town we stumbled upon a bar where we had pub food & a couple of pints of beer. There was a stag do going on & they invited us to join them. One of the stags was called Goose & he thought it was really funny to rhyme our names Goosey Lucy! An Irish descendant he delighted on telling us that his parents were from Dublin & Belfast. After a while of chatting to Goose we realised we were shattered so declined the kind offer & went back to our cosy B&B.
