Vacation in Revelstoke

July 28-31, 2017 - Mini Vacation in Revelstoke

Anne noticed that I had 4 days off in a row over the weekend, culminating in her birthday (she is 29, of course!). She has completed the six-month ordeal of the CP3, that was the final hurdle to getting her pharmacist license here in BC. She will soon be heading down to Maryland to visit with family and help take care of her mother. Our Honored Son (HS) will soon be heading to California to seek his fortune in Silicon Valley. Really, it is our last likely time for a family vacation. So naturally we headed for Revelstoke.

We stopped at the Dutchmen Dairy for ice cream.

The camel and llama are both gone now, but many farm animals are still on display. 

I was working in Sicamous a couple of weeks ago, and got two one-liter tubs of their ice cream after work. It was actually a bit disappointing. We remember how rich it tasted in previous years, but these two tubs were not much better than generic grocery store ice cream.

I got a double dip, mint choc chip and licorice. The mint chocolate chip was mediocre, but the licorice was as rich as I remembered from years before. What’s going on, D Dutchmen? Maybe they need to get a new camel…

We arrived at the Mulvehill Bed & Breakfast (with optional Wedding Chapel) and got the grand tour. It is near a gorgeous lake, so quiet and peaceful. Here are a couple of pictures;

Next morning, we headed up to Mount Revelstoke Park. Managed to find a parking place even though it was Saturday, and hiked around to the Fire Station

and the Ice Box—a pocket glacier still frozen in late July.

Three weeks ago, they still had a meter of snow in the visitor parking lot, so I guess our timing was good.

Honored Son posed next to a rusty sculpture of a First Nations Chief, offering a peace pipe. When he looked up in the sky, he saw a tiny, shiny object hovering way up in the air. Here’s the best photo of it, along with an enlargement;

It is probably a couple of Mylar Balloons that got away from someone—But of course I will claim that it is a UFO….

When we got down to Revelstoke, there was a very fancy train surrounded by police cars. Premier Trudeau had stopped in town to make a speech. There was a lot of high security craziness going on, but we got some good pictures of the train, if not Trudeau himself. There was a couple in the dining car of the train, but we could not be sure it was them.

The next day, we were tired out, and pretty much just hung out in the room. It was very peaceful next to the lake.

Monday—Anne’s Birthday! At 29, she hasn’t aged a day. We checked out of Mulvehill, and hiked to the top of the hill to see the generator shack and the waterfall—Beautiful!

Then dinner at Three Valley Gap, and home again.

The closer we were to home, the more severe the smoke became. Wildfires are still throwing a lot of smoke and ash into the air. We hope it will rain before September.