Yes…you read correctly…we woke up in the snow!

Not just a spattering, it had settled all around us, on the beautiful alpine blooms, the stranded G-wagon and covered Peggy! We jumped out of bed like it was Christmas day and we had never seen snow before! It was such a feeling! Like we had pushed our personal boundaries, Peggy’s boundaries and really gone that one step further than most by staying there and had been rewarded by the beauty of nature!

That, of course, was before we remembered that snow was slippery and we had a 12km drive down a verticle rock face to get back to civilisation ( and that was a ghost town!). We packed up and chatted to Peggy all the time, convincing her that she was fine and that if she made it down without her axel snapping off we would take her for a wash and would get her a service in Vancouver! She started first time, almost eager to leave and we set off on the steep decline. The snow soon vanished and we were left with wet mud and ravines most of the way, it didn’t seem as scary as going up but then maybe we felt a little invincible after surviving the night with a crazy killer on the loose (in our minds). We made it to the bottom in an hour and set off to give Peggy a right good old wash!! We skipped into the hand wash in New Denver and soaped, lathered, rinsed and waxed Peggy til she shone like a new penny! I swear she left with a smile on her face!

The drive to Summit lake (where we watched snakes and toads on the stone beach) and beyond was a proud one. We kept looking in the wing mirrors and seeing Peggy glinting in the sunlight!

We drove South through the Okanagon which was generally summer town! We hit Cherryville, Vernon, Kelowna, Peachland, Summerland, Penticton and Keremeos on our drive into the desert! All of the above towns were beach towns and vinyards and orchards full of the most amazing fresh fruit! Cherries, peaches, apricots, sweetcorn,tomatoes…it was all outstanding! The wine route was prolific but we just didn’t have the time unfortunately! We drove through one of the towns which was dubbed the ‘floaty capital of Canada’ and sure enough we watched hundreds of candy coloured inflatables float along a lake for miles! The road followed the lake and we saw families, a man and his dog, a man and his beer, teenagers splashing and every group of people you can think of floating calmly down the lake! What a great way to spend your weekend in the sun!!!

We finally arrived, 24 hours after waking up in the snow, in the bona-fide desert! The temperature is 10 degrees higer than the town 30 minutes drive away and the scrub-covered ochre hills one of Canada’s oddest landscapes! It was like we had arrived in a different country…and all of a sudden!

We spent the night on a hill…and again lost power to the freezer…luckily the pound of mince, pork chops, pork belly, bacon and 2 chicken legs survived in the freezer! We are officially learned! With and E D! We left the next day in the direction of Vancouver and landed in Hope. Hope was the town that was unceremoniously blown up in the ‘First Blood’ Rambo movie and we walked the Othello tunnels which also featured in the film. This wasn’t really intentional but never-the-less an intruiging stroll. I had gone in a bikini top (and shorts..thankfully!) as we were so far from anything and anywhere at the site we were at and it was in walking distance.

As I discovered, it is quite a popular trail! I froze while those more organised donned their head lamps and jackets to walk the chilly arches of the old railway! The railway took 5 years to build and opened in 1916. They built it by blowing holes in the side of a canyon to create a path through and it closed 43 years later after numerous avalanches, mudslides and rock falls! The track was fascinating to walk, to think in was built all those years ago in such conditions was crazy! Another bonus was that the track was bulit over a river that was full of salmon! The salmon were swimming against the rivers current, jumping up against the falls like you see in the documentaries! It was the most incredible thing to see. They all lined up in the pools away from the current having a break and egging the next one on! ‘Go on Sammy, you’ll make it first time’ and off Sammy went, straight for the rock face, against the direction of the crashing water and jumped…actually jumped out of the water onto the rock and then over it into the next pool of calmer water! It was just unbelievable the balls these fish had to do what they were doing! Again, something we were privelaged to see on our adventure! When we got back to the van we ate mince, gravy, mash and cabbage to make us feel at home and hit the hay early ready for our drive to Vancouver tomorrow!!!!!!!!

See what happens next in our wedding travel adventure!