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We arrived at Gladstone Provincial Park and settled into our beautiful campsite. If we get sun here, we should have good exposure for the solar. It’s another small park but large sites.

A walk to the lake shore confirmed the smoke was still impacting us.

Our main goal for this area is hopefully a couple of bike rides on rail trails in the area. Sunday, we had some rain and thunderstorm risk so Paul went out and biked the local roads. Then on Monday, we loaded the bikes and headed down to our first trail head. The trail wasn’t too bad and about a kilometre from the start we came to a trestle bridge overlooking the Cascade Falls.

We carried on past the falls and went a total of about 11 km until we found a rest stop, compete with red chairs!

After returning to the truck. We decided to go find Christina Lake Provincial Park and have a swim in the lake. One of the other reasons for this location is the shallow beach here making it a warmer beach. The water did take a bit of getting used to but it was refreshing.

We returned to the trail on Wednesday, hoping to ride in the other direction. However, once we got to the trestle bridge overlooking the Kettle River, we found the trail wasn’t too not suitable for bicycle riding. It had large stones and was difficult riding. Apparently it is used by 4-wheelers that chew up the surface.

We turned around and loaded the bikes into the truck and headed west along Hwy 3 for 20 km. to Grand Forks where we got on the trail and headed back east. We rode to the red chair lookout that we had stopped at on Monday. The first 3.5 km in Grand Forks was paved and really nice riding. After that, the trail was manageable with our bikes and abilities.

We did a few errands while in Grand Forks. Filled up with some extra fuel, got some groceries and stopped at a fruit stand to buy what will probably be the last of this season’s peaches 🙁. We have so enjoyed the fresh fruit during this trip

Tomorrow we head out to our last park before we start heading for home!

We left camp on Wednesday morning ( Sept. 3), headed for the village of Nakusp. Our plan is to get to two more hot springs in that area. We’re starting to see more haze from smoke in the air. It means we don’t get such nice pictures as earlier in the trip. This drive included a ferry across the Lower Arrow Lake.

The ferry ride is only about 5 minutes and runs on a cable back and forth between sides.

Our campsite is in the Nakusp Municipal Park for the next three nights. It’s a nice shady site, but we won’t get much sun to charge our solar.

Wednesday night we headed to the first hot spring – Nakusp. It is definitely small but water temps were good and it wasn’t busy.

The next day, Paul headed out to scout some trails on his bike. Despite the literature we had, the trails were only suitable for mountain biking. We enjoyed some quiet time outside. That night we headed to Halcyon Hot Springs. It is much larger than Nakusp, but still not busy and the pools had good water temps.

On our last day in Nakusp, we ate homemade pizza sitting around a campfire. It was a nice evening to be outside. We haven’t had a lot of opportunities for campfires due to fire bans, so it was nice to enjoy it when we could.

On Saturday, it was time to move to our next location. It was still hazy from smoke as we made our way to Christina Lake.

More to come as we arrive at Gladstone Provincial Park.