Day 34 - July 17th, 2010 Quesnel, BC to Republic, WA

Today we were up early with the goal of making it into the State of Washington.  It was obviously the weekend because traffic was extremely heavy.  Turns out, this part of British Columbia is a destination area with large lakes in mountain settings, vineyards with numerous wineries to stop, sample, and buy, fruit and vegtable stands everywhere, and miles and miles of rivers to be tubed.

We stopped at a roadside fruit stand and enjoyed blackberry cider, apple pie with ice cream, and a cranberry/nut type bar.  All good.  We counted our remaining Canadian money, decided we had a little extra, and purchased some strawberry jam and blueberry brandy syrup for the trip home.  Even had a local give us some red cherries to sample.

I studied the map after enjoying the pie and ice cream.

The lake just north of the US border was nearly 50 miles long and the road paralleled it on the west.  Gorgeous homes with great views, park-like settings, orchards and vineyards, and boat marinas filled the area.  Definitely a place to return to someday.  The river flowing from the lake was adjacent to road for miles and was filled with Apple River type tubers, thousands of them.  We had an easy border crossing south of Osoyoos with no wait.  We had heard the border crossing waits could be over an hour nearer Vancouver.

Took Highway 20 across the State of Washington and was pleasantly surprised by the lack of traffic and two National Forests we traveled thru.  Stopped in the small town of Republic at their fairgrounds to camp.  One other motorcyclist on a KLR tenting, a pickup camper from eastern Iowa, and a pull type camper were our only neighbors for the night.  What we did not realize is that the entire county had no electricity for the day for maintenance reasons so no restaurants were open for supper.  Went to a gas station that was operating on generator power and bought a pre-packaged supper (chocolate milk, chips, peanuts, and a Slim Jim).

 

Guess what, it now gets dark at night.  Tammy's habit of a little reading before sleeping would take some fabricating.  No problem, a LED flashlight resting on your forehead works just fine.

It was good to be back in the USA.  While we all complain about the price of food and gasoline, we instantly noticed a drop in prices when we got back in the US.  And this was not just the Canadian to US dollar conversion either.  Gas was nearly a dollar a gallon cheaper.