Travelling Days - Sun Peaks to Kelowna to Vancouver

Today was the first of our travelling days on our way back to Vancouver ready for our cruise on Saturday. From Banff we travelled to Sun Peaks which was quite a long drive which John and Peter shared. Peter had been ringing the resort to make sure we could get through as we were headed in the direction of the wild fires that have been sweeping across the British Columbia area of Canada. All was good but we did encounter some smoke haze along the way.

The scenery was nice but nothing like we had seen throughout the rest of our trip. we had prepared ourselves with some pre made sandwiches for lunch but finding somewhere to stop and have lunch was proving challenging as we were no longer in a national park with picturesque pit stops along the way. We had also encountered quite a lot of roadworks which made for some slow going at times.

John finally saw an opportunity and pulled into the car park of a suspension bridge park. We found that there was a table and chairs at the bottom entrance so we just sat there and had some lunch as we didn’t when we would get the next chance.

After lunch we set off on our way again and arrived late afternoon in Sun Peaks Resort Village. It was a lovely place surrounded by mountains which clearly pegged it as a ski resort even though in summer there is a golf course and a couple of other things to do. As it was late we found a pub and had a beer which the boys thoroughly deserved as it was a long drive. We had a quick look around and couldn't resist a try in the big Adirondack chair.

We had dinner in the restaurant of the Sun Peaks Grand where we were staying and might I say it was grand and the biggest room we had had so far. After dinner it was off to bed ready for our last day of driving before hitting the seas on our cruise.

Kelowna

This drive was probably the one that really didn’t grab us at all as the mountains gave way to the plains and not much else in between. There were some nice water vistas at times but overall not much else. When we arrived in Kelowna it was 34 degrees so very hot by the standards we had just come from. A check in, a rest and then an early and easy dinner followed. Ready for the home stretch to Vancouver the next day.

Vancouver

Well what started out as a fairly easy 4 hour drive became a torturous 8 and 1/2 hour journey finishing after 5pm that afternoon. We were making really good time to get the car back to Vancouver when the traffic on Highway One just came to a complete standstill. And that traffic only crawled along for something  for close to 3 hours. Thankfully we had some munchie stuff left over from the rest of our driving trip and we had water although no one wanted to drink for fear of needing to go to the toilet and there was nowhere you could go that’s for sure. We eventually found out that it was an accident involving multiple vehicles and trucks. It happened at 10 am in the morning and they were still not letting traffic through at 3 pm on the afternoon! We were finally redirected and a good decision by Peter and John working together with the sat nav and the paper map had us taking an alternative route into Vancouver. But in doing this every way into Vancouver was backed up due to the high volume of traffic. Can I just say John was a very calm driver and didn’t let the delay really bother him unlike Cheryl and I who just wanted it over and done with as we had washing to do when we got to our accommodation.

When we arrived the boys went and had a beer while Cheryl and I did the washing. By this stage we were all tried and hungry so the boys brought back Chinese and that was dinner done! You have to love self contained accommodation.

After a latish diner we were off to bed ready to start our next day which was cruise day!!!