Not much to report, pretty much of a travel day. We are trying to get to Jasper and Banff before the labor day weekend. People tell us that is the last busy if not the busiest time of year. Jasper is about 250 miles from Kamloops which is about a two day trip for us
Kamloops turned out to be a pretty fair sized city, 90 thousand souls. I had the mistaken assumption that the towns would be getting smaller the further north we travel. From a Canadian's point of view Kamloops is probably not particularly northern in the scheme of things. Calgary and Edmonton are major cities and quite a bit further north from where we are.
We decided to stay in a provincial campground away from the hustle-bustle of the town, freeways and train routes. Our last night in Hope turned out to be a noisy one. The RV park we stayed at while pastorial in appearance, turned out to be between the Canadian Railway line and the freeway. Trains were passing through all night long, and combined with the early morning truck traffic, made for an intermittent night of sleep.
The Lake Paul campground turned out to be the campground about a mile from the actual lake. We had visions of a lakeside campsite, but in reality we were camped above the lake about a mile away. The sites were nice, well spaced apart and fairly level for us to back into. There were 90 sites and the campground was only about 20% filled. We walked down to Lake Paul, a pleasant mountain lake, with a swimming area and picnic grounds. There was a warning sign about water sports in BC. It said that if you fall in the water, you have about 1minute to control your breathing, 10 minutes for the effective use of your arms and legs, and if you are lucky enough to be wearing a life jacket, you could survive for maybe as much as an hour before hyperthermia would kill you. It sure made me want to think twice about swimming. In reality Santa Cruz swimming isn’t much safer I suppose.
Aug 25 Lake Paul to Blue River
Another travel day. Blue River is just in the middle of no where on the way to Jasper. Not much of a town, gravel roads, railroad switching station,two stores, one gas station, 1 RV park. It looks like a railroad town where maybe the crews change and people employed by the railroad live here. It is similar in appearance to Gerlach. Small run down houses that look like they spend a lot of time in the snow. However upon further inspection, we discovered what looked to be a 5 star helicopter ski resort here. Very upscale cabins and lodges with helicopter pads to carry rich skiers to the tops of mountains. It doesn't look like the rich skiers spend any of their money in town.
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