It's raining for the third day in a row. The forecast this morning was for the day to be mainly fine, but it's now 7pm, and the drizzle hasn't let up yet.
This morning we started the day with a pancake breakfast from the camp kitchen. We had pancakes, bacon, blueberries and coffee, all for just $6 each! Katie had been sceptical of the pancakes, figuring they'd just be out of a box, but when she saw the huge bowl of batter and all the hotcakes on the griddle, she changed her mind. We sat at a table outside and ate breakfast while watching hummingbirds buzzing around little bird feeders hung in the windows of the camp office.
Even more people have shown interest in our tent, perhaps Burmis should have given us some flyers and business cards with it! They all want to know how it's held up, is it comfortable, is it sturdy, etc.
Because everything is still wet, we decided not to pack the tent up and instead taxi into town. We got the number of the local cab company from the office and were picked up 10 minutes later in an aging Chevy Impala driven by a lady who looked like she lived off cigarettes and whiskey. She dropped us off at the Revelstoke Rail Museum.
The Rail Museum was super fascinating (to me, anyway, after two hours Katie was a bit trained-out), with the main exhibit being a steam engine and an original lounge car from the Canadian Pacific Railway. The car was half restored, half maintained in its original state, with all the original kitchen and sleeping quarters still in place. I was surprised that we were allowed to walk through it, not just look at it through the windows.
Outside there were lots of old rolling stock, including a caboose, several snow ploughs, and one of the original diesel-electric locomotives used on the CPR. I was enthralled with being up so close to all the machinery. Katie was more interested in the history of the railway, and the incredible feats of engineering and manpower that went into building the line across the country.
We looked at model bridges, and read stories of the Chinese workers who were "hired" to build the track and drill the tunnels. They were paid $1 per day (about half what white Canadian workers were paid), but then charged more than that for lodging and food. No records were kept of their lives or deaths, and they were generally hired in 'gangs' rather than individually. The Last Spike monument that we saw yesterday had a wall dedicated to the Chinese community, which now made a lot more sense to us.
We decided to walk back to the campground, which is about an hour uphill from Revelstoke. As we started up the hill all trace of footpath disappeared, so we were just walking in the gravel along the side of the road. This was okay until we reached the intersection with Highway 1 (The Trans-Canada Highway), where traffic travels on average 120km/h, and at least 50% of the vehicles are 18 wheeled trucks. Luckily it was all downhill from there, so we walked quickly and stayed as far into the grass as we could.
Back safely at the campsite, we decided to string up our tarp again. Learning from our previous mistakes, we tied the tarp on to the highest points of the tent and moved the picnic table over to tie down the low side. This way we have enough headroom at the back of the car to comfortably stand up, while not allowing water to pool anywhere. Success!
