The reason for our unpopularity

One of the first lessons a new bus owner learns is: when phoning for campground reservations YOU DON'T HAVE A BUS. You have a motorhome - a 40 foot motorhome if asked - but always a motorhome.

This is the reason why.

"That" is parked across the road from us tonight at Thousand Trails, Cultus Lake. Now there may be some fine people living inside that contraption but when campground owners hear "bus" that is what they immediately assume is arriving. It doesn't show real well in the photo but there is a 5 gallon pail more or less centred under the closest side of the bus which I hope is only catching the dishwater.

This morning we brewed up some tea and coffee. Then we headed over to our hosts for a pre-departure visit. They are getting ready to leave themselves but they probably won't get away until the end of the week. They are headed for a spot north of Puerto Vallarta. We visited them there two winters ago & I could drive back to the spot but right now I can't remember the name of the place.

This is the same park that we were in this spring when we first got out here. Then it was full of people and kids - now it is almost deserted. They stay open year round but the woman at the desk sounded surprised when Marilyn phoned to make a reservation this afternoon. We didn't want to reserve too much ahead of time because we first had to get over the 97 Connector and the Coquihalla. The forecast was for 8 cm of snow overnight but there wasn't anything on the ground this morning. BC Dept of Holidays has this wonderful webcam service for many of their highways. Last night I checked the cams for the Connector and the Coq and then again first thing this morning I had a look as soon as the sun got up. I couldn't see any difference in the snow overnight so I concluded that they hadn't got any snow in the passes. I could see on the cams that the sky was about half clear so I figured the highway would burn off once the sun came up and that is exactly what happened. We ran into a little bit of slush in the passing lane a couple of times but most of the trip was on wet pavement and we even ran into some dry pavement. Of course everything was sanded so the rocks were flying every time somebody went by.

By the time we got to Hope there was an occasional green leaf left on the trees and when we got to Cultus Lake there were green cedars and some of the maples still have their red leaves. As we found this spring, one of the biggest challenges of this place is getting a good satellite shot. Even after picking a site specifically for its southern view we still had some "issues" with getting the dishes aimed. Our neighbour to the north went out of his way to assure me that it was impossible to get a Starchoice signal in this site. (not only is it possible, the Starchoice signal was relatively easy - the Hughes signal was bit more of a challenge but obviously possible or you wouldn't be reading this)