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Kamloops Sunday, August 22 (From Denise's notes...) We had a leisurely morning. Went to breakfast, stopped at an ATM to get some money, fueled up the truck, and left at 11:30 am for Kamloops which about half of the way to Jasper. Everything here is metric. It's weird to see the road signs in kilometers. And what's with the flashing green signal lights? They still have red and yellow but sometimes the green is solid and at other times it flashes. But the locals drive through, flashing or not and so we do too. The weather is beautiful. Between Vancouver and Kamloops is a lot of high desert. Mountains covered in dry grass and scrub brush but not many trees. We followed Trans-Canada Highway 1 the whole way. It added about 93 km (you figure out the miles) to our journey but we avoided paying a $40 toll to take a shorter route up Provincial Highway 5. Lots of tunnels with signs to remind you to remove your sunglasses and turn on your lights while going through. Oh, and iced tea comes with lemon and sugar already in it. No wonder the waitress looked at us funny when we started adding Sweet and Low and asked for lemons. Monday, August 23 We decided to spend the day in Kamloops. We've covered almost 1200 miles in the past 3 days and were ready for a rest. We started at the Visitor center and browsed the literature. One item that caught our eye was a wildlife park located about 15 minutes east of town. Well as it turned out, it was nothing more than a zoo and a poor example of one at that. So we saved the $15 and went to Boston Pizza for lunch. It happened to be "Mexican Monday" with margaritas for $1.99. So two margaritas and a Santa Fe pizza was the ticket. It was excellent!
Next we familiarized ourselves with the Liquor Store. Apparently, you can only buy liquor from government owned stores. If you ever come here, make sure you smuggle enough supplies across the border to cover your stay. We didn't bring quite enough and forgot an item. So $104 later we had a bottle of Kahlua, an extra bottle of Gin, and a 15 pack of Coors Light. The only saving grace is that today's exchange rate is 48%. I don't quite understand how that works but the clerk told us that it equates to about $1.80 Canadian for $1 US. I just hope we get back quite a bit when we file for our non-resident tax refund upon leaving the country.
Then we went to the grocery store. Try finding fresh corn tortillas in Canada. We did finally find them after asking 3 times. The first answer produced pre-packaged shells in a box on aisle 17. The second netted flour tortillas in the bakery. Finally, we found corn tortillas in the deli. Go figure. Anyway, we're staying at a quiet RV park in Knutsford. It's not the most beautiful place but pretty good considering that the landscape is predominately dry. There's a small stream and quite a few trees. It serves the purpose. Tomorrow we plan to make it to Jasper. Time changes to Mountain time at the border of British Columbia and Alberta.
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