Ian Rambles
The little free Bleriot Ferry is winched across the Red Deer river on wires. It is a one man operation. We were the only vehicle and the ferry had to make an empty trip to come and collect us.

The forest roads that the sat-nav directed us along were brilliant. We felt that we had earned the mountain views this time, unlike the Jasper national park.

Fort Steele could have been much better presented but is just a collection of sheds and junk. Some of the older buildings were in such a poor state that they probably constituted a safety hazard. The town is not laid out as it was at a particular point in time and the buildings are not cotemporaneous but there is no labelling.

There are lots of pieces of machinery and other "heirlooms" - but no labelling. It may be that every Canadian child knows what a horse driven grain mill looks like - though I doubt it. The water tower, converted into a lookout for visitors, is labelled "Water Works" - but there is nothing to explain how or where the water was drawn or what work was done to it.

Fiona's Journal
Thursday July 17th
We headed North from Drumheller this morning in order to take the Bleriot Chain Ferry across the Red Deer River. This is a free service and fun, we were the only vehicle on this crossing. The Bleriot in question was brother to Louis, of flying across the channel fame. Then we headed South and West in long tacks since they don't do diagonal roads on this continent.

We avoided main highways as much as possible which is how we came to stop in a little palce called Acme for brunch at 11.00. Our young waitress was amazed that anyone who was travelling around the world should include Acme in their itinerary. She equally amazed us by saying she had come to England last year to see Everton play. This struck us as an astonishing reason to travel a third of the way round the globe but, of course, in the course of further conversation (between trips to and from our table to the kitchen) it transpired that it wasn't quite like that. She was a member of a rather successful girls soccer team who had gone to England and Northern Ireland to play in a tournament. They had been given a training day at Everton and then watched a match as well.

We continued our journey using a fair proportion of gravel roads which had no other traffic a lot of the time. This meant Arthur could have a couple of sessions driving the RV, which he did very competently, and George also had a go at steering while seated on Ian's lap. We have covered a fair mileage today, still crossing rolling, agricultural land for the most part but we are heading back into the Rocky Mountains by the end of the day. We buy some groceries and a bundle of firewood from a roadside store, run by a very friendly Korean family and then are lucky enough to get the last vacant site in a Provincial campsite, no services but lovely woodland setting. The boys build a fire in the pit and incinerate marshmallows on sticks after supper.

Friday July 18th
This was a rather adventurous and memorable day for us, although it started routinely enough. We took the main highway through Crows Nest Pass but then diverted off onto Hartley Forest Road, as advised by the intrepid Sean. This turned out to be a narrow, winding, unsurfaced road up into the mountains with numerous frail-looking wooden bridges where it crossed and recrossed the river. It was fun to drive but not fast and the scenery was just stunning. I took hundreds of pictures and don't think any of them will do it justice.

Eventually we reached a junction with Bull River Road which was wider and gravel-surfaced but there was a faded old sign (which we could just about read) saying that no vehicles without CB radio may enter this road so that vehicles coming in opposite directions can communicate about where to pass. We hadn't met a single vehicle on Hartley Forest Road, which had no passing places at all now I think of it. We decided to ignore the sign.

We trundled along, throwing up a mighty dust cloud in our wake, stopped to look at an impressive dam producing hydroelectric power and didn't meet any oncoming traffic at all. Near the bottom of the mountain where the river was slower and broader we pulled off onto a stony beach on the river's edge and cooked a hearty breakfast. I rinsed the dishes in the river and paddled and watched a pair of deer on the far bank. For the first time on this RV trip I felt properly in the wilderness and if we had found this spot at the other end of the day we would have camped here for the night.

We reached Fort Steele about 1.00pm and wandered around this recreation of a 19th century farming and trading town. It started life as a fort with a resident garrison, because of understandable resistance from the local native Indians to having their lands sequestered, but according to the introductory spiel “the colonists quickly restored order” and after only a year the garrison moved out.

Then it was back onto the gravel roads up through the mountains again, Ian driving with clouds of hot dust and gravel spewing out behind us. The RV is not the most comfortable vehicle on these roads and the internal fittings rattle remorselessly, along with our bones and our ear drums, but the views were spectacular and well worth the discomfort.

We climbed and climbed and climbed until we were above the snow line and at the highest point in the pass we stopped. We had passed a little open-topped jeep with a flat tyre a little way back and although they had waved us on, saying they would be fine, we were a bit worried about the two children in the back who would be getting pretty cold at this altitude and with nightfall approaching. I started cooking tea while we waited and George built a dam across a little icy stream by the roadside.

After about twenty minutes the jeep appeared the jeep came crawling past. They still said they would be fine but we decided to let them go on a bit and then follow on behind, just in case they needed us later. Not much later at all the heavens opened and we set off after them down the mountain.

The rain quickly changed to hailstones the size of marbles which soon covered the surface of this precipitous mountain track like a lorry shedding its load of ball bearings. We hurried on cautiously and soon caught up with the jeep and this time they were glad to accept some help.

We took the children, Aspen and Tristan and Grandmother Joyce into the RV to get warm and dry but her husband Les was adamant that he could get the jeep back down the mountain with its, now shredded, front left tyre so we crawled on in tandem at 5 mph for another hour or so. The hail stopped quite quickly but it was rapidly getting dark now which made me a bit nervous with no barriers or even white lines to show where the edge of the road was.

Anyway, after a long and arduous stint behind the wheel Ian got us safely down to the highway at Kootenay Lake. Les parked the jeep in a friend's drive and joined the others in the RV with us and we ran them home, which was only another 10km along the lakeside. They were very grateful and insisted on treating us to a family ticket for the Hot Springs Spar at Ainsworth so we will enjoy that pleasure tomorrow. Actually, it was rather nice to have been useful to someone after two months now of non-working self-indulgence!

Saturday July 19th
We took “the longest free ferry ride in the world” (allegedly) this morning across Lake Kootenay and thus we returned to the Pacific Time Zone. Then a 20 km drive brought us to Ainsworth Hot Springs which proved to be a real treat. The main pool was pleasant bath temperaure and big enough for leisurely swimming or just floating about on your back. Then there was an even hotter spring which filled a system of small caves and tunnels to about waist height on me and you can wade or sort of swim through these or lounge in corners and it is like having a very hot bath and a sauna in the half dark. You can come out of here and plunge into a cold pool under a cold waterfall which is strangely pleasant in a masochistic sort of way.

After an hour of such idle indulgence we piled back into the RV and headed on our way back towards Kamloops. We had another short free ferry ride across another lake and then back on the highway for some classic North American easy, relaxing, long distance driving with Keith's Buffy St. Marie playing over and over on the CD player.

We stopped about teatime at our first Tim Hortons and had good coffee and a selection of interesting donuts and then, 20 km short of Kamloops, Sean directed us off the highway at Pritchard, across a single lane bridge where you could not tell if there was anything coming the other way until you were almost half way across (and then, if there was, of you would have had a very tricky bit of reversing to do) – there wasn't! He navigated me through the lovely back roads up to Pinantan and on to Paul Lake avoiding Kamloops completely. This took us through mixed woodland as well as rolling grassland and in the light of the setting sun it was quite beautiful. We got back to Sarah and Keith's about 9.00 and it had the feel of coming home.

Arthur's Log:
17th
We cruised most of the day stopping to eat a dinner were we talked to the waitress who had been to england on a football tour.

18th
We found a really cool road through the mountains, doing zigzags up one side of each mountain then down the other. We ran into (not as in hit) another car dragging a flat tire after they blew one then blew the spare. We decided to tail them because they had to kids in the back and we didn't want to go ahead and never find out whether they made the 50 miles of mountain road.

After a while they changed from one flat to another cause the first one was starting to look like a hawian hoola skert. Fisrt the clouds came, then it started to rain then it started to hail then the hail got big. I'm glad we followed them cause other wise we couldn't have piled them in the RV to save them (they were in a open top car).

After a long day we got there and first they wanted to drop them at the botom of the hill but dad decided to be a showoff and drove them al the way into there driveway and parked the RV door almost touching the front door. Mum and the lady had a argument, they were trying to pay us for fuel and mum was saying no.

During the trip when we said we were from england she said ''England? There is alot of sheep there no?"
lol

19th
Most of the day was spent driving, but we did stop at some hot springs we were told about yesterday. They were pretty sweet actualy. They were quite small so not many tourists.

By far the best bit was a 30 foot long underground tunnel that was about 2 meters high 1 meter wide and half filled with water. The farther you got in the hotter it gets ending up at about 100f or 35c were the water it trickling out the rocks.

It was so picturesque and there is pictures of this place in the snow!!! I came out of the tunnel and saw a little hot tub like pool that i though I'd try, so i jumped in, 10 degrees C with little ice cube floating on the top. My ******* has never shrunk that fast before.

George's Musings
Very nice hot springs.