Today was an early – early — early start for us. Although I love my island, this ‘getting off/getting to the island’ adds considerable time to and first day of any trip. In order to catch the 7:45am ferry, this equates to having to be at the terminal by 7:30am. Meaning that we have to be up and on the road by 6am.

We left the house. Stopped to pick up Wayne and Jenn and roared out of town in order to meet Big Don at the psycho gnome. When we got there he was already waiting at the front entrance and we didn’t even pull in to pick him up. Again – the big push was to get to the Duke Point Ferry to get off the island.

We were successful in making the 7:45 sailing. And once on the boat, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and knew that the holiday had officially started!

Once the ferry docked big Don led us on an alternative route. Although it took roughly 10 min longer, we were able to bypass most of the traffic of the city and we headed for Hope. We made good time and arrived at Hope just shortly after lunch hour and stopped at the Hope Diner. This is an eatery with good food and a reasonable price.

We pushed on through to Osooyos, making a few stops along the way – one of which was at the Mariposa fruit stand in Keremeos. We spent the night at the Sun Beach motel which was reasonably
priced and was right on the beach. After a brief dip and a drink it was time to call it a night. More than 500km today – but that Ferry added a lot of time to our travels.

High point/quirky incident: a crow trying to dive bomb Bog Don with a walnut.

Low point – there was none.