Day 19: Mount Revelstoke National Park, BC

After having our normal oatmeal breakfast, we for Mount Revelstoke NP. The most accessible part of the park is the Mount Revelstoke summit. To get there, you must take the Meadows in the Sky Parkway. This road is very windy and goes up 1600 meters over 26 kilometers, crossing through the rainforest and going up to the flowery meadows.

We don't think this would be a good trip for Bertha, our motor home. So we park her at the bottom of the mountain, we hike a steep trail to hit the parkway, and we hitch hike. Yellow takes advantage of this break to dry his sweat, which might be a deal breaker for a driver picking us up. A car passes, two motorcycles pass, a bike passes (who we cheer on), and few other cars pass before a black car stops. A couple from the Netherlands brings us to the summit. 

 

Once we are there we walk for a few miles all around the summit trails. The panoramic view is stunning in every direction, and the meadows are colorful with a great variety of flowers. This is the perfect place for lunch, except for the bugs. The horse flies especially are making Red frantic. We finally find a good spot, and eat our lunch quickly while killing some mosquitoes here and there.

 

We start walking back down the mountain, trying to find a good spot to hitch hike, when our dutch couple pulls up beside us and offers us a ride. This is of course an offer that can't be refused, so we find ourselves back at the bottom of the mountain. We drive to the Revelstoke dam, which is suppose to be really tall. Yes, it is really tall. We stop at the BC Interior Forestry Museum, and then wonder why we made that stop. We drive through the town of Revelstoke that is said to have a “David Lynch atomosphere”. There is definitely something here.

On our way back home, we stop at two trails at the eastern end of the national park. The first is the Skunk Cabbage Trail, which brings us to the rare wetlands of the Columbia mountains. We are impressed by the largeness of the plants, which brings the feelings that we've walked into Jurassic Park. For the skunk part, we will say that it has something to do with the smell. The second trail is the Giant Cedars Trail, and the Jurassic Park feeling continues in the midst of this centennial towering forest of Cedar and Hemlock trees.

 

In the evening back at the campground, we park Bertha in front of the service area. Lame. We know. But that way we are right beside the showers ($1 for 6 minutes) and most importantly, we can stay inside the RV and access the internet. Mosquitoes – 1 Us – 1. We are surprised though to drive back to our campsite and find that someone has settled in there. Oops. The perpetrator is a man from Washington state (an American of course) who is trying to find a free site for the night, even if the campground is full. He politely leaves and settles into a spot across the way. The rest of the evening is surprisingly hot, almost suffocating in the RV and marked by eerie train noises that sing Yellow to sleep.