(written on July 25th from notes taken previously)
Waking up at the Wapta Falls recreation site was similar to waking up at Mount Adams last week:
The clouds were low, the mountains socked in, then and this morning. At Mount Adams, I caught brief glimpses of the cone, and here, I caught some glimpses of Wapta Falls below us.
Just like at Mount Adams, I expected the fog to burn off as the sun rose in the sky, but just like Mount Adams, the reverse happened.
I got a few peeks of the beautiful waterfall far off in the distance, but eventually, the clouds and mist that I thought was burning off, settled more thickly over the river until it entirely blocked the view of the waterfall.
So thick were the oncoming clouds that we eventually found ourselves in the middle of the clouds ourselves.
With It clear that the views were going to be obstructed for quite a good while to come, and with the hike to the river being a multi-mile hike, we decided to just go ahead and continue down the road West toward Golden.
Golden is a junction town, so to speak. It’s one of the main towns before you head east to go to some of the super famous national parks, like Jasper, Yoho, Banff, etc.
So it’s built out a good bit more than the other little towns in the area.
We needed gas. We needed groceries, and I wanted to grab some oil and antifreeze to restock after having given what we did to Nancy.
But gas is going to be a lot cheaper down south, and I figured I would rather wait until I found an AutoZone in the states to resupply. We had enough oil for an oil change, which I wanted to do as well, and we had enough coolant for a minor emergency, but not a major one.
The oil change was going to have to wait, though, because it was wet.
I didn’t want to do it on the black top, because I figured I was going to spill some oil and didn’t want to leave oil spots on someone else’s pavement, nor did I want to do it on wet pavement.
I wanted to do it on dirt, but dirt posed an even greater challenge, at least because it was wet outside.
I’m not much for changing the oil anyway, let alone changing it in the mud.
We began heading south from Golden along another corridor that had mountains on both sides all the way down. Unfortunately, because it was socked in with clouds, you could only see the lower down mountains but not the craggy peaks behind them.
One of the things that I have loved about the Canadian Rocky mountain so far is how the huge mountains come down right next to you. In Utah where I grew up, much of the time, the big peaks had all sorts of hills between you and them, so you went over a hill then down, then over a bigger Hill, and then down, and then finally you get to go to the peak.
With many of the mountains in the Canadian Rockies, the massive craggy peaks come straight down to the ground.
It’s amazing.
I love that.
This portion of the Rockies, however, was more like the mountains I grew up with in Utah. Lots of hills before the you get the last climb up to the peaks.
So we couldn’t see all that much, but still, it was beautiful. We took lots of pictures along the way, and I continued to keep a secret from my mom that I had been keeping for several days.
My mom is 79 years old, turning 80 pretty soon, and she’s never been to a wild Hot Springs. What I mean by wild is one hasn’t been commercialized. There are tons of hot springs where people sort of turn them into pools of hot water. They end up basically just being public pools that happen to be hot And filled with Hot Springs water instead of regular chlorinated water.
But she’d never been to one that was the kind of thing you just have the hot water bubbling out onto the ground, and people have erected little dams to hold the water in different places, where you could just go, there was no admission, there were no commercial entities to pay or to buy souvenirs from or anything like that.
I managed to keep her in the dark about it all the way until we got to the sign right next to the Hot Springs.
🥳
That involved driving south from Golden for at least a couple hours, I think, and then turning on a dirt road that went Way East into the Foothills of the mountains above.
The dirt road was a super well taken care of Road, so it was an easy drive through the hills and past all the logging areas to the parking lot.
It definitely wasn’t as wild as other hot springs I’ve been to, as this one had pit toilets and a fence around the parking lot, and a walkway and railing and retaining wall down to the river (It was managed by British Columbia parks and recreation people), But it was wild in the sense that there were no commercial things there, no buildings other than the toilets, no people selling anything, And the hot water was surrounded by Rock and sand– Yes likely arranged by someone with heavy equipment at some point– But still feeling quite natural.
There were four pools of hot water, the upper pool being the hottest, and then the pools got progressively cooler as he went lower and lower toward the river.
My mom and I got changed, she wearing one of my pairs of shorts and one of her t-shirts, and I just wearing my shorts.
We spent most of our time in the third pool, Which by itself was decently warm, about like bathwater. There were some kids and their parents in the coolest of the pools, a couple sitting together in the second of the four pools, a very tiny one that only two people can fit in anyway, and then a handful of people hanging out in the upper, hottest pool. That one was supposedly 108°, but when my mom and I climbed over all the rocks to check it out, it seemed like it was more like hot bath water, and not even as hot as a hot tub.
Still, it was a nice place to be, and my mom got to experience her very first wild Hot Springs. 😊
There were, of course, the typical… less dressed people… a couple of college-aged girls from Australia who were going to work at the Whistler ski resort over the winter. I think their combined clothing footprint was equal to maybe almost… Well, I can’t think of a good example. I guess it would just be accurate to say they were g-string bikinis.
Not so nice to have to see, but does go a bit with the territory.
At least there weren’t any people fully in the buff. I’m not quite ready for that kind of stuff just yet. Too many inhibitions. 😅
Being there reminded me a lot of trips I’ve taken to the Spanish Fork hot pots, or probably more correctly known as 5th Water Hot Springs up Spanish Fork Canyon in Utah.
Just like the 5th water Hot Springs, there’s an icy cold river right next to the pools of hot water, so if you want to, you can bounce back and forth between the hot water and the icy River, which I did several times.
In addition to being exhilarating, it’s good for you… At least I think so. From what I’ve read.
My mom gave it a whirl as well, dipping her tiny body into the freezing Cold River and then going back into the bathwater pool that we were in.
Fun stuff.
We were going to keep heading south, and I was tempted to take that same road that the hot springs were on all the way down to Fort Steele.
Unfortunately, however, the forecast was for it to freeze overnight and possibly snow up in the mountains, so we thought better of it and just headed south toward Cranbrook.
Though it was cloudy and a bit rainy, there were still beautiful vistas to capture, which resulted in many stops to take pictures along the way.
At one point, there was a pretty significant whining noise that sounded like it was coming from the engine compartment, and it was correlated 100% with RPMs.
😬
It got loud enough that I was starting to be pretty concerned about it wayne I finally realized…
It was the radio.
😶
I had accidentally turned on the AM radio with my cell phone when I was putting it up on its little magnetic holder, and for whatever reason, decibel level of the wine of the static from the poor radio connection increased exactly with the RPMs of the engine.
Go figure. 🙃
At least it wasn’t a problem with Rover. 🥳
Yet another issue caused by yours truly. 😅
As we were getting ready to head south, I had some kind of weird feeling like something was off. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, But it seemed like something about what I was planning was not right. So I thought for a minute, and I was like well, if I’m not supposed to head south, then what do I do, in the first thing that came to my mind was to change the oil.
Joe A decided to do an oil change right where we were parked, which was on the side of the Road in a pull-out that had some garbage cans.
It was sunset time, and I just barely missed the best colors of the sunset, but here’s at least a taste of what it was.
We were definitely well overdue for the oil change, having gone near to 5,000 mi without a change, I think, including dirt roads And what not. I’d already added 1 quart of oil to top off what had been used in the first couple thousand miles, and so I was a court low again, and I didn’t want to add another brand new fresh quart of oil just to turn right around and drain it back out a little bit later, so I went ahead and did my oil change.
I didn’t bring an oil drain pan, but one of the trash cans had what looked like a large yogurt carton in it, so I used that to catch about the first quart or so, and then I used the empty oil jug that I had brought for exactly the purpose of changing the oil, and I drained the rest of the oil directly into that jug.
Unfortunately, I did spill a fair bit, both because of the awkwardness of the job, as well as because the wind was blowing.
I also ran into an annoying issue because the previous mechanic (yours truly 😅) had way over tightened the oil filter to the point that I couldn’t get it off for anything, and I didn’t have an oil filter socket with me to take the filter off via ratchet and socket.
I tried and tried and tried with all my might to get off the filter with my hands but failed. Eventually, I gave up, got one of my long fat screwdrivers and a hammer and beat the screwdriver through both sides of the filter and used the screwdriver as leverage to remove the filter.
I was a bit annoyed at myself, but eventually, I got It removed, the new filter put on, New oil put in the engine, and I got all the old that wasn’t already in the jug poured into The jug out of the yogurt container thingy.
After that, I didn’t know exactly what to do. I wasn’t sure why I had that feeling that something was off, but after having changed the oil, we just decided to continue South.
I don’t know why it seems to be just me over and over again having jose odd feelings. First at Rainier, and then here, and I think maybe one other time as well.
It’s a little frustrating to me.
I should probably be grateful because maybe there are good reasons for those feelings, but it just seems so random sometimes, so pointless.
Neither of us were in the mood to make dinner, so we decided to go ahead and find a place to eat in Cranbrook.
That turned out to be harder than expected. 😅
By the time we got there, it was something like 8:45 or 8:50 p.m., Aunt all of the places that we were trying to go were either closed or about to close their eating areas, leaving only drive-through is open.
I don’t like going through drive-throughs because I don’t get to refill my drink for free. 😅
I feel like I’m leaving too much on the table. 🙃
So we got ourselves some McDonald’s for dinner, Canada being in the middle of playing their version of the McDonald’s Monopoly game. I ordered something cheap that doesn’t come with a Monopoly piece, but mom got something more expensive and thus got one of the little Monopoly pieces.
Fun games. 🙂
Reminded me of decades-long past when I I was a little kid and won 50 bucks from the Dick Tracy McDonald’s game.
Fun times. 🙂
Anyway, after the fast food fiasco, I found a place about 20 minutes Southwest of town (Monroe Lake recreation site) that was supposedly a place that we could stay for free, and it was on the way to where we are intending to go tomorrow, so it seems like a pretty good place.
The parking/ camping areas are a little odd, but, whatever.
So we headed that way, used the pit toilet facilities, parked Rover, and that was our day.
Tomorrow, we’re planning to experience a Canadian ferry crossing. My mom went on one years ago–many many years ago–and she was excited to experience it again.
Oh, I forgot to mention! It was kind of fun to be where the headwaters of the Columbia River are. We drove along the Columbia River, past Columbia Lake, etc. Fun to be there at the beginning, When just a week and a half ago, or so, we were where the Columbia River is as wide as a lake and getting ready to empty into the Pacific Ocean.
The outside weather made it so you couldn’t see the full color, but Columbia Lake is a turquoise blue similar to Lake Louise from yesterday.
Cool stuff.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 