O Canada!

Happy Canada Day!

Allow me to pass along a good piece of advice...when planning a trip out of town, especially to another country, verify if there are holidays happening at your destination!!!

A few years back, Eddie and I decided to spend a long weekend in Canada (British Columbia) over the 4th of July weekend. We planned to leave on July 1st and come back on the 4th, to see the fireworks here. What we failed to realize is that July 1st is CANADA DAY! Yeah - it's a big deal. So, not only did it take us a very long time at the border, but we had just planned to mill around British Columbia - we really only had a general idea of our route, no real hard and fast destinations in mind. Well, we got to the border and border patrol asked us the usual questions, you know, where do you live? how long will you be in Canada? where are you going? etc. We didn't have very good answers, apparently, because we were pulled to the side and detained for a little bit until they believed us that we're really just here to spend a long weekend and don't have specific plans. That, and we mentioned that one of the towns we were headed to is called Lilooet. We had just thought of going there because it was so fun to say the name of the town, but the border patrol I guess couldn't believe that without family that lived there, that Lilooet would be one of our stops while in Canada!!

Ok, so they finally let us proceed and we made our way to Lilooet. It's a quaint little town - not really a destination and nothing really to do there - be we can now say we've been there. Anyway, on our way around, we ended up in Eastern BC and it was getting late, so we decided to stop and try to find a hotel in Penticton (another fun town name to say!). So we got to Penticton and I must have called over a dozen hotels - ALL of them were completely booked!

We ended up staying at this little motel - they had ONE room left. Picture a hotel from the 1960's...single story, you back your car in right in front of the door to your room, a little area where all of the travelers can gather together and have a BBQ, complete with built-in charcoal barbecues - seriously! We very reluctantly accepted this room and only because it was really the only one left in the entire town that we could find - it was a smoking room so I was not thrilled at the prospect of coming out of there smelling like cigarette smoke!! BUT the owners, a nice little older couple, were so sweet - they had an entire BIG bottle of Febreze just waiting for us when we arrived so we could spray down the room. We used it all - yep, the entire bottle!!

The next day, we started meandering a bit more...hitting LOTS of traffic, but eventually making our way back to Washington.

Now, despite how it sounds, this trip was a lot of fun. We discovered some very interesting places, encountered mountainside roads where one lane was completely washed out and a straight drop down the face of a cliff, toured a river boat, and even visited Hell's Gate :)

We've often said to one another how fun it would be to go back...probably not over Canada Day and likely next time, we'll make hotel reservations in advance! :)

Happy Canada Day!