03 June - Kamloops to Revelstoke

We generally sleep early and get up early. Some of us are still working for a living so we like to find a coffee shop which is open early and has plugins for our laptops. Starbucks is the coffeeshop of choice followed by McDonalds and Tim Hortons. If we haven't driven far, our Bluetti Power supply will not have charged up much and since it is the unit which powers our fridge we will bring it in to McDonalds, plug it in and charge it in less than an hour. 

Kamloops has a great Starbucks (they are not all the same) so we spent more than four hours in this space before getting in our Sienna and moving east on the TransCanada highway. Apparently there was a bridge out down the road so Google Maps took us on a 30-minute detour. 

We knew there were hot springs in the area and thought this might be an opportunity to absorb the relaxing min of the hot water coming from deep in the mountains so selected Crazy Creek Hot Springs. They told us that Mary Lou was close enough to being a senior (65) so gave us both their senior rates. We were pleasantly surprised to learn they had four pools, each with different temperatures. Mary Lou doesn't love the hot water, 40 C, so enjoyed relaxing in the clear mountain liquid of 32 C. After 2 1/2 hours we found we had relaxed deeply and weren't sure we could make it to our next destination!

We ate our bread and cheese supper at a pretty rest stop by a lake.

Revelstoke was founded in the 1880s when the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was built through the area. As happens in much of North America, names of geographic spaces are those of white men. This town of 8,000 was originally Farwell, after a local land owner, but then that name was changed by CPR in appreciation of Lord Revelstoke, head of an investment bank that saved CPR from bankruptcy in the summer of 1885 by buying the company's unsold bonds, enabling the railway to reach completion.

If you look at Wikipedia, history of Revelstoke starts in the 1800s and places, like the river (Columbia River) are named after Europeans. The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: Wimahl or Wimal; Sahaptin: Nch’i-Wàna or Nchi wana; Sinixt dialect swah'netk'qhu) is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America.

We spent some time at the little library of Revelstoke before heading out to one of the better iOverlander stops we've stayed at on this trip -- higher elevation, surrounded by forest, newly painted pit latrine -- for a peaceful night. Lights out for us was 10pm and we slept well until shortly after 5am when we decided it was time to start our day....at McDonalds!