Where Mountains Touch Rivers

Saturday was spent exploring Trail because we were exhausted from a long day battling the thick snow on Friday. Amy has more well-developed snowboard muscles so she spent the beautiful sunny day back at the hills. LJ, Robyn and I patioed at the local McDonalds (free coffee) and then I spent some time at the Trail arena in order to write and update the previous blogs. The arena and the library are attached, but the library was closed for the day so I sat in the rink to write. I was amazed at how nice the Trail arena is:

The money invested in the arena shows me the value that this small blue-collar town places in sports. It's all over the place - a state of the art arena, a high-quality baseball diamond, and an over-equipped rec centre nestled amongst the humble homes and streets give a unique flavour to the place. LJ mentioned, correctly, that the town has invested intelligently in these facilities because it gives the youth an outlet for their time and energy that could be spent doing more devious things. Small towns are rife with dark outlets that can be very attractive to inquiring minds and Trail has created a good system to try to divert malleable kids towards positive activities.

The shining example of this is the Trail Smoke Eaters, a BCHL hockey team steeped in tradition. I am impressed that such a small town can support a Major Junior hockey team, and even more impressed at how succesful this team has been over the years. Trail is a bit of a grey city on the surface but, when one looks a little deeper, there are unique characteristics that make it a very interesting place to explore.
The mural on the side of the arena

A sports 'hall of fame'

The Katimavik house under Amy's watch, where we're staying for the week

Understanding Trail and it's nearby towns has been a great Canadian learning experience.

So Many Activities!

Thursday was likely the longest/busiest day of my life.

We woke up in Golden dark and early (we beat the sun) and I felt like I was 6 again, being woken up by my Dad to go off to a House League hockey practice. Except no one carried me downstairs in a blanket and put my equipment on for me. Love you Dad.

We were up early to get a jump on the 2 hour drive to Revelstoke. We were a little groggy and somewhat sore from a day of boarding but that wasn't going to stop us. While driving we sheepishly celebrated gaining an hour as we drove from Alberta to BC. Sheepish because we mentally budgeted to be on the slopes for 10am and this meant we could be on the runs by 9am, but we felt a slight pang of defeat knowing that, if we had thought things through properly, we could've slept for another hour.

We arrived in Revelstoke at 8 local time and checked into our hotel. The weather was much more overcast than the previous day but we were accepting of a little cloud cover, considering the beautiful day we had enjoyed the day before. We had arranged a 'stay and ski' package with the hotel we were staying at and were lucky enough to be able to check in at 8am and get into our room. We geared up and were at the mountain by 9am. The resort didn't have snow cover to the base but we were warned of this and proceeded onto the lift undeterred. Here's the view from the parking lot. The fog prevents a good view up the mountain but trust me - there was a lot of vertical and there was snow up there:

Because we got the package deal and bypassed the resort's box office, we never received the weather warning that they were giving to all customers, which was of extremely high winds and poor visibility. Well, we learned the hard way and after two gondola rides and a lot of uneasy looks amongst each other we were told that the 100 km/h winds at the summit prevented the resort from opening any of the lifts and basically the whole mountain was shut down. We battled our way down the hill and realized that the windburn and huge gashes in our boards were not worth trying to be heroes. We were obviously quite disappointed

This letdown, though, led us to have one of our first 'BC mentality' experiences in dealing with the friendly people here. Because we had purchased the lift tickets through the hotel and they had repeatedly stressed 'no refunds' we were expecting to have to battle with them to get our money back for the ski passes. Also, because we were only in Revelstoke to ride and staying there without using the mountain made no sense, we were hoping to get out of the hotel completely and move on with our journey. Being conditioned in Ontario, where rules are rules and common courtesy takes a backseat to revenue drivers, I had little hope of recouping our money for the lift tickets, let alone a refund for the hotel room. Imagine my surprise when we returned to the hotel and had a friendly conversation with the front desk and were granted a full refund for everything and wished a good trip. It was a refreshing customer service experience and I would recommend anyone passing through Revelstoke to stay at The Sandman Inn Revelstoke. We geared down and got out of the room again. It's only 11am by this time. We'd already driven two hours and been up and down a mountain. I've done less in an entire weekend in Markham than we had done before lunch. But we didn't stop there.

The geography of the situation dictated that it was best to launch from Revelstoke and drive the 5 hours to Amy's town of Trail. We hunkered in for the long ride under grey skies and looked forward to a trip to the Hot Springs along the way - seemingly the one attraction along this stretch, except for the lakes and mountains out the windows. We did, though, get an opportunity to ride on Canada's longest free ferry ride across Shelter Bay. Although the surroundings and weather were distinctly Canadian, it was much like any other ferry ride. I'll spare you a picture of the car in front of us on the boat (it was a GMC van).

We arrived at the hot springs around 2pm and we all welcomed the chance to stretch and warm up a bit. The cold overcast weather really sinks it's teeth in. The hot springs were made even more comforting amidst the gloomy horizon:

We relaxed for an hour in the water until our pruny hands and woozy heads forced us back onto the road. The effects of the hot water must've stayed with Amy a little longer than she realized because she took a wrong turn around 3 and it wasn't until 30 minutes of driving in the wrong direction (around a beautiful lake so I'm not complaining) that she realized it. So we were back on the right path again at 4.

We drove towards Trail as the sun set around us and we were all feeling the effects of a long day on the road. Conversation dried up and pit stops for snacks became more frequent. We arrived in Trail with high beams and stomach aches around 7 and dragged ourselves out of the van into Amy's house. It's quite large, with room for 14 people. We didn't do much looking around, though, as hot showers were the priorities. We were in bed by 9 and drifted off to sleep not long after that.

It was a long BC day.