Today's day zero for our epic road trip!
We started the day decidedly un-epically, packing up our belongings and cleaning the house. We did our best to sort our stuff into things we'd be using on the trip and things we wouldn't need until we got to Toronto (or at least, to Boulder). After meticulously packing the car, we realised that although we managed to fit everything perfectly, we'd have to unpack the whole car whenever we wanted to get anything out. Some mild panic set in, until Katie remembered that Pania (Dad's cousin, who lives here in Vancouver) had offered to hold on to anything we couldn't fit. We quickly reorganised our winter clothes and miscellaneous belongings into two suitcases, and I rushed off to Pania's place, leaving Katie to put the finishing touches on the laneway house. We were really sad to leave Annie & Max's beautiful house. We would have happily stayed there forever, but adventure awaits!
Our first destination was Hidden Valley Campground in Salmon Arm, an hour east of Kamloops. We had originally budgeted 3 hours for the drive, but I think that was before we'd decided on a campground. It turned out that it was going to take us closer to 5 hours, and we had to get there before 7pm! Despite our mad rush, we were only able to get away from Vancouver at 2pm, so we spent the whole drive watching the ETA on Google Maps.
The drive to Salmon Arm was beautiful. The freeway steadily climbed up into the mountains for hours. We were on Highway 5, known as the Coquihalla Highway, which provides a shortcut through the mountains between Vancouver and Calgary via the Coquihalla Summit at 1,244m above sea level. The speed limit along the Coq is 120km/h, which Anders struggled to maintain on the steepest sections. While it had been raining when we left Vancouver it was fine for most of the drive through the mountains, only turning sour again once we approached Kamloops.
We arrived at Hidden Valley with five minutes to spare, only to discover that they were now on summer office hours and check-in was open until 8pm. So many missed photo opportunities along the way! We found our campsite down in the valley by a little stream and set up the rooftop tent during a break in the drizzle. The only outdoor shelter our tent provides is directly underneath it, so it doesn't really provide us with a nice spot to relax or cook when it's wet. As we didn't feel like cooking in the rain, we just made some quick sandwiches and hunkered down to endure the storm.
The next morning we awoke to a drenched campsite. The tent had kept the rain out for the most part but was wet in some of the corners where the mattress touches the sides. The water inside the tent was slimy and yuck, which we decided must have been due to runoff from the trees above us, or the result of some sort of coating on the inside of the tent. Either way, it made folding up the tent much more unpleasant than when it was dry.
The weather was still looking pretty dreary, so we decided to pack up camp and head into the nearby town of Canoe for some breakfast at The Hive. After some great coffee and a shared breakfast wrap, we got back on the road, heading for the BC Wildlife Park back in Kamloops.
The wildlife park was incredible! We saw lots of animals we'd never seen before, and listened and learned from some of the keepers as they explained how their bears came to be there, and the ethics behind training birds of prey.
We saw:
- A Kermode bear (a black bear with white fur, not albino though, apparently caused by a recessive gene very similar to what causes red hair and blue eyes in Europeans)
- Grizzly bears
- Moose
- Lynx
- Cougars
- Elk
- Porcupines
- Patagonian Mara (like a cross between a deer and a rabbit, strange things)
- Racoons
- Bison
- Deer
- Coyotes
- Arctic wolves
- A Badger
- Lots of squirrels (although not in an exhibit, they were all over the park)
After walking back and forth for hours between animal exhibits and presentations, we had some more sandwiches in the carpark and headed back to our campsite. Thunderstorms were forecast for the evening, so we stopped in at Walmart and picked up a tarpaulin. We discovered that while unfolding a rooftop tent is relatively easy, setting up a tarp in a way that doesn't immediately create a swimming pool above our heads is quite hard.
We managed to cobble together a shelter while becoming increasingly jealous of the tarp at the campsite across the river, occupied by some people who had apparently paid attention in Scouts. We cooked up some satay soba and eggplant while staying surprisingly dry, washed the dishes, and retired for another rainy night.