Day 2–an easy 11 hour drive from Golden to Merritt…

It should only take under 5 hours. We stopped. A LOT!

The Motel in Golden was a little underwhelming. I would stay there again if I was alone on the road, but for my family I’ll probably choose the Ramada next time. This place is located away from most things in town, near a trailer park and pretty much nothing else. The room is very very clean with room for everyone, but I dunno, you sort of set a standard for yourself, and this just fell short. I won’t name the place, as it is pretty popular and the family that runs it are super nice folks.

After a quick breakfast at Tim’s we were on the road. We didn’t worry too much about breaks for a while as we were rested and enjoying the scenery. Andrew settled in to a movie so we just carried on. The roads were very busy all day and we spent most stints lined up in a convoy as far as we could see.

As we headed up to Rogers Pass we enjoyed some snow sheds (tunnels to the boy). For these he shut his movie off and watched intently as we made our way though a couple clicks of these.

As we approached the Summit we decided it was time for a stretch, and washroom break as the coffee had done it’s job by now. There is a sign in front of the Glacier National Park building to bring your National Park pass inside, and once inside it is your free pass to peruse the Rogers Pass museum. I’ll tell you what, the National Parks do an incredible job of interpreting their lands. This little museum was filled with incredible displays and interactive stations that educated us on many parts of the pass. It was beautiful in there too! Andrew found some fun kids areas too! If you have been past here and never stopped, make sure you do next time.

Once we left there, it’s a 56km downhill stretch into Revelstoke. We took 2 hours to get there. Why would it take so long?

this.

There are 3 places we stopped to enjoy these boardwalks. The first was Hemlock Grove, the next was Giant Cedars and the last was Skunk Cabbage. My favorite was the Cedars. This place smelled like the best smell I had ever smelled. I can’t describe it. It must be like what it would feel like to live inside an oxygen tank! IT was an assault on all my senses and I found myself breathing as deep as possible to get every ounce of this place into my body. sooooooo amazing.

Can you smell it?

Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk didn’t have the same appeal for me but we did see some pretty neat stuff. Like this 6” long Slug.

The Skunk Cabbage was HUGE. These leaves were a couple feet long!

The plants were worth the 1.5km walk alone!


I started to play with some of the amazing textures here.

And now you can spell Skunk Cabbage in French.

From there we dropped down into Revelstoke. With no real agenda, we followed the signs to the Farmers Market and the Train Museum! The Train Museum is small, but incredibly well layed out! We enjoyed a full 45 minutes there exploring the open cars and locomotives. Neat stuff! Andrew loves trains, so this was a highlight for him for sure.

At the Farmers Market down the street from the museum, we hung around, ate some smokies and watched a coal train shunt back and forth all while generally enjoying this gorgeous day.

We left Revelstoke with a failed attempt to get a Tim’s coffee (sooo busy) and headed for Salmon Arm. It was getting to be the heat of the day and we didn’t want to miss out on a swim today. We bypasses some pretty cool tourist places as we will visit on the return trip in a few days.

Canoe beach was pretty empty. I was pleasantly surprised! Andrew had a blast in the warm Shuswap Lake, and after a 1/2 hour we figured we better keep trucking. Merritt is still 2 hours away straight driving time.

This tunnel is under the railway tracks to get to the beach from the parking lot.

Not too much else to say. We stopped for a visit with an Uncle in Kamloops, and grabbed a slurpee for the rest of the trip to Merritt. I’ll tell you about the Hotel tomorrow, but for now, just know it’s way more comfortable than the last!

So until tomorrow, where I will be chatting with you from Beautiful Vancouver… Goodnight!