Sunday, May 27, 2018 (Travel to the Mall at Piccadilly, Salmon Arm, BC)

Well, today is the day...our summer/fall adventure to the east coast of Canada begins! We had an abbreviated version of our usual morning coffee wake up time...had breakfast, showered and got to work on our final pack up.

Once all of the slides were in, Steve fired up the truck and started airing up the trailer tires when all of a sudden the truck abruptly went into a fast idle which didn't sound normal to either one of us. Great, just what we need...truck problems on the day of departure! Normally when you apply the brakes it kicks it off of fast idle but not this time, so Steve turned the truck off and started it again...no more fast idle. He continued airing up the tires and thankfully the truck ran normal...cool we're all set to go. It was 9:40...not bad, since we had planned on being on the road by 9:30.

We made our way over to the Trans Canada Highway (1) and headed east. Although a little hazy, Mount Baker in Washington is still magnificent...

I barely managed to capture a picture of this deer along the side of the highway...there were actually 2 of them...the yellow stripe is a reflection in the window from the road...

Fraser River near Hope...

 At a truck weigh station just before Hope, there was a mandatory watercraft inspection station...so with our 12' boat on top of the truck, we stopped.
It is mandatory for all watercraft to stop at road side inspection stations. Watercraft includes sailboats, motorboats, car toppers, kayaks, canoes, and paddle boards being transported in BC. Dedicated crews of inspectors check and if necessary decontaminate mussel infested boats. This approach has been taken by other jurisdictions in the Pacific Northwest, and proven to be highly effective in educating boaters on the risk of invasive mussel introduction.
After a number of questions (the boat hadn't been in water since we were at Lone Rock on Lake Powell last October), we were finished. But before getting back on the freeway, we pulled over so that Steve could re-torque the trailer tires...

On the Coquihalla (hwy 5)...lots of raging water in the rivers...

 Box Canyon and the snow shed tunnel...

 Still lots of snow on the mountain tops!

 We stopped near the summit at rest area...and had our lunch...

 Nicola Valley...and Merritt...

 Fields here are flooded as were parts of the town a week or two ago...

 Beautiful Nicola Lake where we workamped a few years ago at Monck Provincial Park...

 I think this is Surrey Lake...

When we reached Kamloops, instead of continuing north on hwy 5, we headed east...back on the Trans Canada hwy. The Thompson River runs along side of the highway...

 Shuswap Lake...they claim to be the houseboat capital of the world...

We pulled into The Mall at Piccadilly in Salmon Arm at 3:00. There is a Save-On Foods, Starbucks, Canadian Tire and a variety of other stores as well as a sanidump. Unfortunately the liquor store is gone! It was pretty busy, but we managed to pull over along the edge of the parking lot...and wait for people to come out and leave as there were a couple of cars in the way. We went into the Canadian Tire store, picked up a few things and by the time we were back out, we were able to move our rig and get it parked for the night...

It is a great spot to overnight...very quiet and the only issue we had was the temperature...it was 27C/81F! We went to bed with only a light sheet covering us...luckily it cooled down during the night.