TAKING OUR TIME

We spent two nights in the Lemon Creek Lodge Campground.  There was a couple from Idaho a few sites up from us the first night but we had the whole campground to ourselves the second night.  Very peaceful.  We had more time to ourselves also as there was no internet or cell service in the area.  It did make it more challenging for me as I decided to extend our travel days to five from four in the amount of time it will take to drive from Cranbrook, BC to Grand Junction, Colorado.  I had to work with paper maps and the Good Sam RV Camping Guide when looking for parks for the night.

We are so enjoying our slow pace here that I wanted to take some of the haste and long days out of the trip south.  We put on 215 kms the first day from Salmon Arm to Nakusp.  After two nights there, we traveled 89 kms to Lemon Creek, spent two nights then traveled 95 kms today.  We are in Balfour tonight and went up to Ainsworth Hotsprings after supper.  I love the hot pool there and Aileen is able to tolerate the cooler pool.  We will put on considerably more tomorrow as we are planning on getting to the Cranbrook area where we will lay over two nights before heading across the border and south on Thursday morning.

I spent part of two days geocaching along the Slocan Valley Rail Trail.  The fall colours are at their peak and it was just gorgeous travelling along it.  I spent nearly as much time taking photos as I did geocaching.   I rode/walked 12 kms the first day and 19.5 the second.  

This accommodating grasshopper let me put my SX50 very close to him.  I love the macro capabilities of this camera.

And even closer

Yesterday, I drove down to Winlaw and rode both directions on the rail trail.  The river was dead calm and the reflections superb!  I spent lots of time pursuing photo opportunities rather than geocaching.

This whitetail doe posed quite nicely along the trail.  Shot while straddling my bike.  Taken with my Canon SX50 with the lens at just over 1100mm.

There were lots of fat robins stuffing themselves on the berries preparing for their southbound journey.  Shot with my Canon SX50.  Lens at 1200mm and digital zoom at 1.54X.

My trusty bike,the river and the rail trail

Today after leaving Lemon Creek Lodge Campground, we drove down to Winlaw, parked the car and motor home then walked some of the rail trail that I had done on my bike yesterday.  Again it was gorgeous and I wanted to share it with Aileen.  We walked just over 8 kms.  We'd left Mitzy sleeping in the motor home but got her out when we walked the other direction for a short distance.  She got to play with a Jack Russell and a larger dog later named Memphis.  The people in this area are very friendly for the most part.

Along a couple of areas there were a lot of spider webs.  I call this a spider's highrise.

This bridge crosses the Slocan River at Winlaw allowing traffic to go up and downstream on the other side from the highway.