Summer fun – Part 1

While we were snow birding in Mexico for the winter, we got notifications that we were invited to 2 weddings this summer! How exciting….we just had to figure out how to fit them into our “already planned” vacation schedule. We usually have multiple sets/chunks of  (work)cations planned, so the first wedding merged into the first chunk; 5 different vacation locations during a 4-week span between Jun/Jul and this is how it went.

Location one was the first wedding which was on the second last Friday of June. The wedding was in a field by a campground – this worked out perfectly. Ruby was loaded on Wed, along with the boat that we needed for locations 3, 4 & 5 over the next 4 weeks. We spent 2 nights at MacLean Creek with a group of other folks that were also attending the wedding. Jill had never camped here before (even though I swear I had), but Todd had been here many moons ago. The campground was amazing and so close to the city! The spots were quite big, but they were all double sites – so if you get another RV beside you, they weren’t really that big. Luckily it was mid week, and we never did have a neighbor. There are hiking trails around and if you have an OHV, the trails start right at your site. The wedding was short and sweet, followed by the reception which was located downtown Calgary. Our master plan for this was to drive Ruby back into the city and park her really close to the c-train line, so we could take the train downtown for the wedding reception! This worked out well, as we had scoped out a great location a few weeks prior too the day and even though there are rules around overnight camping on the city streets – we managed to pull it off without an issue.

The next day we departed down south (location 2) for a week with our bus friends. This was a 4 year long overdue trip to Silverwood Theme Park. We had purchased season passes in Nov of 2019, with the intent of going to the park for the 2020 season, but for obvious (covid) reasons, we weren’t able to go until 2023. We had two days before our check in to the RV park. Our first night was spent in the parking lot of the Casino in Bonners Ferry. Todd and I hadn’t been to this town since our honeymoon in 2011, where we stopped for a night on the way home. We moved on the next day to Coeur d’Alene Costco to buy everything we needed for the week and then stayed overnight in the now defunct Golden Corral parking lot, with a tag-along RV’er from Washington state. Here are a few pictures so far: Starting summer off (rumble.com)

We finally arrived at the Silverwood RV Park around noon and it was HOT! Had a quick lunch before we headed over to the park for the rest of the day. If you’ve never been to this park, I would highly recommend it! We aren’t super theme park people but have been to both Disney’s, Universal Studios and a few others. We really liked this place – the rides are on one side and a huge water park is on the other. Here is a quick tour of the entrance and the walk to the water park: Silverwood Tour (rumble.com) This is where we spent most of our time (when we weren’t in the RV park – which is across the highway, fully accessible on foot by a tunnel)! It’s a magical setup really. Aside from one projectile vomit session on day 1 (after 3 back to back rides on the log ride, Stunt Pilot roller coaster and the spin cycle – that spin cycle killed me!), we mostly loved the park! Here is a list of things that we really liked:

• how friendly and happy pretty much everyone is that works there
• its an organized machine, but not in your face
• its big enough but small enough that walking around doesn’t completely exhaust you
• very CLEAN
• the flowers were so amazing!
• convenience of walking from the RV park to the theme park
• theater events are very good (they have won awards for the magic show) and the shows change every year – you won’t see the same one year after year
• the ride line ups go quite quickly
• Todds most favourite thing was the lazy river

We managed to entertain ourselves that week with both day and night with park activities, eating, campfires, stories and games. We are not salespersons for the park, but our friends have been talking about it for >10 years and now we get it! Here is pics of some fun: Silverwood photos (rumble.com)

With vacation location 1 & 2 behind us, it was time to move on to location #3. Which meant driving back up to Canada to Sicamous, BC for houseboating! There’s no direct route between the theme park and the small town in BC. We zig zagged this way:

Not a very exciting drive, which is good, but we did stumble upon Grand Coulee dam: Grand Coulee (rumble.com)  This dam is the largest hydropower producer in the US, but they only use it during peak times. You can take a dam tour too, but we were on a time crunch and couldn’t stay for it. We need to come back and do the dam tour when we do our WA state tour. We carried onwards and upwards towards Osoyoos border crossing and eventually making it up towards Peachland for our overnight stop at a spot we know has a gravel turnaround at the end, and would most likely be quiet to boondock. An early rise the next morning to pick up all groceries in Vernon that we will need for houseboating. It’s been at least 6 years since we last went houseboating and because we were repeat customers (and maybe a few other reasons, I’m not sure), we got a slightly bigger boat upgrade. Here is a tour of the Mystery Ship houseboat: Houseboat tour (rumble.com)

We arrived at Waterways to board the Mystery Ship on Sunday at 5. Both Todd and Logan made it quickly through boat captain training including a quick rundown of the boat operation and we were off to our first destination on Shuswap Lake. Houseboating consists of a solid repeat of activities for the entire time you are there, which includes:

• Get up start coffee (for 10 people)
• Un-beach the boat and move to lake center to float
• Eat breakfast
• Float in lake, swim in lake, jump in lake (all things related to getting wet in lake, with or without drinks)
• Snacks (with or without drinks)
• Repeat getting wet in lake (practice synchronized swimming routine with or without drinks)
• Drive boat to new beach location and secure (with drinks)
• Eat supper
• Campfire on beach (drinks, story telling, word games, etc – with or without drinks)
• Sleep (water only)

Logan was the main captain and by day 2 he had it mastered, the deck hands were a little sketchy at times, but overall, pretty good mates! Here is photo evidence of some escapades: Houseboat pics (rumble.com) and here is some jumping videos: Jumping off the houseboat (rumble.com) We only had 1 emergency hospital visit, that resulted in stitches only, no broken bones or tendons (phew! and it was not due to jumping off the houseboat). The last day of the trip included an amazing, synchronized swimming world class event, this year in honour of our late brother-in-law Brent (who had participated in the event 6 years prior). The video of that is here: World syncro swimming finale (rumble.com)

After 5 days on the water, it was a fun time, very hot, no drama, the boat was big enough that everyone had some space but we were all tired and ready to go back to land.  As I sit here typing this up, I still feel like I’m swaying on the water….