Vancouver to Medicine Hat

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Vancouver to Medicine Hat
We left Vancouver late Thursday morning as the weather started to close in, and it was expected to rain later that day with heavy rain on Friday.
We took a loop through downtown Vancouver following my GPS and to give Bones a look around. We made it to Hope and Tim Horton's for lunch, as you do.
We were heading over to Penticton, but when I booked the hotel I inadvertently punched in Princeton!! So it was not quite as far that day as we had planned, but seeing as we left so late in the morning by default it was a good mistake.
We stayed at Castle Resort at Rainbow Lake, all sounds great and fairytale like, but it had seen better days. We had a big lodge all to ourselves so that sorta made up for it.
We got away around 8.00am the next day with Rossland in our sights, but as we headed down towards the USA border the smoke just got thicker and more dense, so we headed up towards Nelson.
We got a bit of foggy murky rainy stuff while we had lunch at the old gold mining town of Greenwood, but as we dropped down off the mountain it dried out again.
We stopped at the information centre and were told about the hot pools at Ainsworth, the very helpful girl there phoned the resort and booked us in for the night.
What a gem this turned out to be with hot mineral pools that went into these amazing caves.
We had an evening meal there that capped off a great day.
Leaving Ainsworth around 10.00am to catch the 10.40am ferry across lake Kootenay as we were heading up to Fernie to stay with George Coulson's Neice, Emma and her husband Alan for the night.
I had told Emma we would be there mid to late afternoon, but of course I forgot that we would lose an hour as we entered Mountain Time. We eventually got there just on five o'clock to meet up with the other party goers that had come to help Alan celebrate his birthday.
We had a great Aussie BBQ along with good company and new friends.
Emma and Alan were great hosts and cooked us such a great breakfast that it lasted us all day on our 389km ride to Medicine Hat.
Fernie is such a great old town nestled in the mountains,but as we dropped down through Crowsnest Pass we soon left them far behind as the Prairies unfolded in front of us.
The amount of agriculture here is just mind blowing, I was thinking about the fellow that leaves in the morning to cut the 'paddock' - he would be lucky if he was home two days later!!
Tomorrow we keep heading east to Regina (lucky spell check worked) to meet up with Robert and Joyce.
So until the next blog, keep ya feet dry.
Rosco

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Photos

The worlds biggest truck
This was a bloody monster, I am standing by the centre wheel!!

Great mountain riding in smoke
Not many photos of this ride as it was too smokey