Welcome to Colleen’s Corner. This is a column meant for fun and some information About myself: I am a Freelance Photographer you often see me on the side of the road or in various places taking photos of different things animals, birds, places, people etc. l have lived in Lumby for over 18 years, you have seen my photos in the newspaper (Lumby Valley Times) and once in awhile in the Vernon Morning Star, and the Lumby Art Gallery. Photography is my passion. Disclaimer: The information on some of my photos that I write about a lot of times come from the Internet or books I research them, hopefully the facts are as close to the truth as I can come.
By Colleen Fielding
This Past Saturday after the market Tim and I went to Burton BC just outside of Nakusp to see my Goddaughter, her boyfriend and the place they live. It had been my Goddaughters 40th birthday the day before.
We took our Minnie Winnie and headed off for the weekend. She had moved in with her boyfriend a few months ago, and this was the first time we would see her new living quarters. When she texted me the week before I said we would bring the motorhome and stay a day or two as we would be leaving shortly after doing the market, she said “great, we have 5 acres”. This sounded good.
Hwy 6 going through Cherryville, is a great road if you are on a motorcycle with all the twists and turns, not as much fun in a heavy motorhome. Other than the twist and turns the trip getting there was good. We got off the short ferry ride and headed off to Burton. Finding Burton was easy, finding her place was not. We had the GPS on to help us get there, but as you know, GPS is not always correct. We went up the road the GPS said to go to, it told us to turn left, and we would be at our destination, wrong, we were not even close! So, we had to drive up the road to find a spot to turn around, it’s not always easy turning a thirty-two-foot motor home around on a tight narrow road, not good.
Whew, we turned around, we drove down the road and pulled over to a driveway to ask for directions, by luck alone we had actually pulled over in front of my Goddaughters boyfriend’s mother’s place. I got out of the motorhome, and she came out of her house, I asked if she knew who we were looking for and she said “yes, I’m his mother”. She told us the proper way to get to his place; it wasn’t even close to where the GPS had said. Down the road we went, oops, we passed it, it’s kind of hidden from the road. We looked for another place to pull around; there was one not too far away. Great, we went a bit up the hill and there it was. We got out of the motorhome, and looked at the driveway, there was no way the motor home would go down there, it was steep, narrow, curvy, full of potholes, and trees growing so low on each side of the road that would surely hit the top of the roof of Minnie Winnie and break something off. This could be bad.
I thought maybe we had the wrong place, so Tim walked down the hill to find out. Yikes, we were at the right place. The boyfriend came up in a car not fit for the HWY to pick me up. It was an ugly car. He drove me down to his place; it wasn’t what I expected. I always thought the weeds at my house were high and a lot of them, his place surpassed mine by far. Anywhere you looked there were weeds, weeds, weeds, everywhere. Ugly!
My Goddaughter was sleeping on the beach; he went to get her. We all sat and chatted for a few hours. Then Tim and I were ready to go to the motorhome. We were right, the boyfriend informs us bringing down the motorhome was highly unlikely, the last time he brought something like down it never went back up. There was no way to get it back up the hill. We would have to park it a little bit further than we were on the top of the hill. He thought his extension cords could reach the motor home to his outlet, but of course they didn’t. Our motorhome is on a slant, there’s no way around it, it was really hard to sleep and walk in there. Yuck, not good! We turn on the lights in the motorhome, they seem a little dim, we run the generator for a while, have something to eat, then decide to read for a bit. We have no tv, or internet, we didn’t bring any games with us, reading is the only option. Tim’s tired, he goes to sleep, I am laying in the bed reading, the light is getting dimmer and dimmer, until it just goes out. I grab the flashlight to read for a bit then, and know that I need the flashlight beside me, the motorhome is very dark. We usually leave a small kitchen light on, but not this time. There is a beeping noise that I can hear while I’m trying to sleep. After awhile Tim wakes up, he has to run the motorhome for a bit, I tell him about the beeping noise, it turns out to be the smoke detector needing a new battery. Crap!
In the early morning when I wake up there are no lights, or anything, I sit there on the electric couch straight up because I can’t raise it up to put my legs and feet on. Not liking this, as I like having my legs up. Tim wakes up, checks the batteries for the solar power panels and of course, they are out of water! Not good.
No way were we staying there another night, in the morning we went down and said good- bye to them. Then we left. We decided to come home through Sicamous, a little bit of a longer drive, but nice. On our way home we stopped at the Ione rest stop, I had forgotten about the beautiful waterfall there, so it was nice to walk around there and take some pictures. We got to the ferry, and of course we missed the first one, but caught the second one, the wait wasn’t too long. Driving through Sicamous is always a nice drive. We thought we would take Trinity Valley Road home, and on the way before we got there, we thought maybe we would check out Mable Lake on the Enderby side, we typed it into the GPS and thought we were on our way. Big Mistake! The GPS took us down some road we had never been before, taking us out to someone’s place that had big no trespassing signs on the fence, great now we have to turn this 32-foot motorhome around in a very tight, narrow, road again! GRRR!
We finally get off this road and head back towards Trinity Valley Road. For a while now people have been saying that the road is a lot better now, we believed them.
It was not at least with the Minnie Winnie, maybe in a car or truck, but not for a motorhome.
AHHHHHHH, home at last. Most of the road trip was a disaster, but even in the ugly, we still saw some good: We saw my Goddaughter, a young grizzly bear walking through a gravel pit, a young doe with her fawn, a lot of ospreys, a few hawks and eagles, chipmunks, the beautiful waterfall, and the driveway to our home where we kicked off our shoes and relaxed for the rest of the night.
