Lunch break, just after Trail and Castlegar

Joan, keeping her baby brother company while we cook lunch

All the kids attack Mike after lunch

This is when we released the gas. Kidding! They all took a very sound nap after lunch

From there, we left Trail, and headed to the very strange little city of Nelson. Don’t get me wrong – it’s beautiful. But it’s very BC. It has a Centre of rtraditional Oriental Sciences, whatever that is. It has a co-op radio station, and interesting stores. Their pet supply store is called “Downward Dog – uniting you and your pet”. (Downward dog is a yoga pose.) Butr it was beautiful – Roxanne was filmed there, so we put the van through its paces trying to hunt down the fire station from the movie. The hills caused the radiator fan to kick in quite a few times. But we eventually found it. I saw a couple houses that could have been The House, but I couldn’t be positive.

After Nelson, we took a drive along the beautiful shore of Kooteney Lake, where it finally started to cool down. There’s a free inland ferry there, which goes across the lake, so we went for the ride, getting on at Belfour. The kids LOVED it..We discovered that the portholes on BC ferries are big enough for a toddler to fit through. We didn’t find out the hard way, thankfully. But it wasn’t for lack of trying on Dave’s part.

A woman offered to take a picture of all of us. She had originaly said “can I get a picture of all of you together?” Mike and I both thought she’d actually wanted a piucture of us for herself. We’ve become used to being a spectacle. Whenever we’re out together, we can hear people behind us: ‘Oh my God! Look at them all” “Oh, they all have red hair! So Cute!” “Holy cow – there’s ANOTHER one!” So I don’t think our reaction was too out of line. I don’t think Dave understood though. He looks a little annoyed that some lady just took our camera!