Thanksgiving 2003

 Our final trip of the year is Thanksgiving.  We usually get cold and wet on this trip, which causes us to put on a lot of miles.  However, there isn't usually very much snow, not enough to block access to where we want to go.

This year we headed out the #1 highway fairly early on Thursday, October 9.  We went past Salmon Arm, then headed north at Squilax on to the forestry road that goes up around Adams Lake.  Thursday night we camped at a forestry site near the tip of Adams Lake.

Friday we headed north again, coming out on highway 5 near Vavenby.  From there we headed to Little Fort & west on highway 24.  This highway is quite steep with a truck lane for about 15km to the top.  We headed off of the highway in the general direction of Chasm & stayed in a campsite not far from Bonaparte Lake on Friday night.

Saturday we headed off in the direction of Big Bar Creek, then south to Pavilion.  Almost to Pavilion there is another very steep road, grades of 14%.  From Pavilion we headed south on the forestry roads again, and camped in a site at the base of the Cornwall Hills.


In the evening we headed up to the Cornwall lookout, Elevation 2036m.


When we first got to the top, it was chilly, but there was no snow.


While we were there, the snow came in.  The white on the trees formed while we were there, you could see the snow in the air, beginning to coat everything around us.  We decided to get back to the bottom of the mountain.  During the drive down visibility got very poor, but it was much warmer camping at the bottom.  Winter didn't find us at the bottom that night.  It really is amazing how fast the weather can move in at the higher elevations (and this was low compared to some of the mountains we frequent).

Most of Sunday was spent lost in the area east of Ashcroft.  The forestry maps show that there SHOULD be an easy road through to the Kamloops area.  However, we've heard that before.  We couldn't find it!!!  This is the second time we've been lost in this area, so we're going to have to spend one of our trips doing a serious explore.

After spending almost the whole day getting nowhere, we came out at Ashcroft (where we went in).  After spending half an hour with the world's slowest air compressor at the local gas station (and still only got 50psi in the tires) we then spent several hours in the rain, in the dark, on the highway so that we wouldn't have too long of a drive on Monday.  Sunday night we dined in the Husky in Sicamous, then camped at Frog Falls.  Frog Falls is about 30 min. west of Revelstoke (near Three Valley Gap) and has been one of our favorite sites for years.  It is very small but quite accessible from the #1, and a reasonable distance from Calgary to be the first/last camping spot on a trip.

Monday we headed home, also mainly in the rain.  After this wet trip, we've decided it is time to replace the leaky windshield rubber on the truck.  While we're at it, we're sandblasting & painting the frame, and getting new glass cut, the 40 year old glass is de-laminating.  We're also working on mounting our 24V air compressor on the truck.  That will appear here someday.