Valemount to Kamloops We started our day today chatting with the hotel staff and were told we might be able to see a couple of salmon spawning down by the river. That is where we
Valemount to Kamloops
We started our day today chatting with the hotel staff and were told we might be able to see a couple of salmon spawning down by the river. That is where we headed. We thought we got euchred when we couldn’t see anything, and then we started chatting with someone who works cleaning the park and river area and he sent us slightly upstream where we got to see two massive bright red salmon. A great start to our day.
Max and Chris saw a Bald Eagle while driving today (Cathy may or may not have been napping on the back seat).
We had a shorter drive today (Kamloops was only about three hours away), so we spent about half our day exploring Wells Grey Provincial Park. We saw some amazing rivers, mountains and waterfalls. We did some short hikes and swatted mosquitos. Chris saw a bear, but by the time he got the car turned around the bear was gone.
We also started to see some smoke in the air. It looked a bit like fog on the hills. The backcountry trails were all closed due to threat of fire, and the whole park was non-smoking. Although we knew it was dry and hot, we were all surprized by just how dry and hot it was.
As we started driving to Kamloops we started to see the smoke everyone has been talking about. For most of the drive the mountain sides beside the road had obvious signs of fire damage (burnt black tree’s), although the fire that burnt those trees was likely from a year or two ago. The smoke just got thicker and thicker the closer we got to Kamloops. When we arrived, the air was full of smoke. Every time we got out of the car Max started coughing and our eyes would bother us. Our waitress at dinner told us it has been a week without seeing the sun and the air is so bad no one can spend much time outside. She also said that air quality gets scored between 1-10 and their air has been rated 49, which makes the pollution in Kamloops the worst in the world. She described it as depressing- that seems accurate to us.
We are checked in to another nice Best Western, the highlights of this hotel include a couch in our room and heated floors in the bathroom.
We are happy to report a comfortable and safe drive in our fancy new car.
Quote of the Day
Max; “Mom, the whole world is a toilet.”
Back story- we were in the woods and I said I was waiting for a decent washroom and Max was trying to suggest I could just find a tree. Given we were looking at massive Jack Pines and a waterfall higher then Niagara Falls when Max said “the whole world is a toilet” we found it pretty funny.