On the third and final day, we had an open agenda and only a few things to do:
- Check out of the hotel before noon
- Get home before dark (neither of us has great night vision for driving)
First, we tidied up our hotel room and checked out. One thing I forgot to mention in the previous posts is that while the shower was very strong and the water was nice ‘n hot, the drain could not come close to keeping up with the water flow, so showers were more like combo shower/baths because you’d be standing in ankle-deep water by the end. Not optimal, but better than not enough water pressure, I suppose.
We once again dined at McD’s and I had another Sausage and Egg McMuffin. I don’t know what they put in those things, other than the parts in the name, but I have a disturbingly powerful hankering for them.
After breakfast, we decided to return to disc golf–but first we would get some bug spray to fend off the mosquitoes. This led to another debacle using the in-car navigation and just weird bad luck (the Pharmasave we first went to was closed on Sundays. Sorry, people who need prescriptions, you’ll just have to deal!) but I eventually got a can of Deep Woods Off! at a Save-On Foods. Speaking of weird, the guy ahead of me was buying two nags of Tim Hortons coffee (this is such a Canadian entry) and asked if I was just buying the one item. I said yes, and he let me go ahead of him. This was nice, but I mean, unless he was expecting some horrible complication with the coffee, I wouldn’t have had long to wait. Maybe people in Kamloops are just that nice.
With the bug spray secured, we returned to the course, sprayed ourselves liberally (spoiler: It worked!) and set out to play 9 of the 18 holes, cleverly using the app to make sure we played in the right direction and everything. At several points, multiple marmots would gather on the fairway ahead of us, apparently knowing we couldn’t throw far enough to imperil them. And they were right.
I started…poorly (7 shots on one hole) and this let Jeff cruise to a win of 41 to 44. We were 13 and 16 shots over par, so not quite tournament-ready (Kamloops is the “tournament capital of Canada” as noted on multiple signs all over the place). Jeff also won the bonus award of “most discs in the water” at three discs! His were very clean by the end of our round. I put a few in the weeds and one over a fence but managed to stay out of the water. With just a few hundred hours of practise, I could probably get pretty good at this!
I only took a few quick shots on my phone this time, Here’s one looking over the South Thompson River.
After wrapping up the disc golf, we began the trip back. It started to rain shortly after we started up the Coquihalla, but fortunately the rain didn’t persist, and it was partly sunny the rest of the way. The rest of the trip broke down1This phrase becomes relevant, as you’ll soon find out like so:
- A brief stop at a Dairy Queen in Merritt, for ice cream cones. This is another example of fast food that was strangely yummy. I haven’t had a DQ cone in probably ten years or so.
- Another stop to let Jeff rest at the Coquihalla Summit (elevation around 4000 feet or 1200 meters). Jeff reminded me again how nice it would be if I had my driver’s license again. The pressure is on! I made a vague promise of sorts.
- A stop in Hope just past 4 p.m. to have an early dinner at Home (but not home). Jeff had schnitzel, I opted for the turkey dinner. I ate almost everything before remembering to get a photo of my food. Sorry, Instagram, you’re out of luck this time!
- Traffic moved better than expected once we got out of the mountains, but slowed then stopped outside Langley. It turned out two pickups got into a pretty good fender bender (more like a “whole front end bender” for the one that hit the back of the other), but we got past the accident just after RCMP arrived and before the fire truck, so the delay was minimal.
- Jeff quizzed me extensively about getting cats nearly the entire drive from Hope to home
- We arrived home at 7 p.m. with plenty of daylight left. I unpacked. Jeff immediately went to the deck. 😛
And that was it!
Although the trip started not-great, and the various map tools all let us down, often in spectacular fashion, it was nice to get out of New West for a few days and there’s something about the look of the area around Kamloops I find strangely compelling. Maybe it’s just that it’s so visually distinct from the coast, where I’ve lived all my life. I’ll have some shots in the gallery soon™.
