After our first night of wild camping we needed to get ourselves cleaned up. The wild camping itself was fine but we hadn’t had a proper shower since we stayed in Jim’s van at Golden Ears nearly a week ago….was it a week or longer?…..the days have started to blur into one now, all I know is that we desperately wanted to get clean. There was a big provincial camp site 15 Km back down the road at Manning Park towards Hope. This site had all the whistles and bells. Showers, a swimming pool, even a hot tub, sauna and steam room. For the small fee of $5 each we would be able to use all of these facilities and the thought of getting cleaned up and relaxing in the hot tub was too good to turn down. Half an hour later we were sat relaxing in a hot bubbling tub at some fancy looking camp site in the middle of nowhere. It was bliss just to feel clean again.
Dewdney trail camp spot
With the grime of several days in a van washed away we headed off East again, passed the wild camping spot and on to the sleepy small Gold rush frontier town of Princeton. Sleepy would be an understatement for this town. We crawled into the small town and up it’s one main street to the tourist information centre. The place didn’t look big enough to warrant a tourist info centre and it was soon easy to see that this small town like many others was making the very most of any visitors that happened to stumble their way. The lady at the centre emphatically helpful. Weighed down by maps and guides and stocked up with fresh water we headed off to find our free camping spot a few miles out of town, again on the bank of the same river that flowed past the big provincial camp site we had just been relaxing at and the wild camping spot we had stayed at the night before. It was a decent enough spot. A small site with only 5 pitches but we managed to grab one right on the river front. It was a good little spot.
Princeton Farmers market
As I mentioned in an earlier entry we have decided to try and park up at the free sites over a weekend period so that we know we have a free spot and don’t have to go in search of one during busier weekend days. With this particular weekend falling on Victoria day a Canadian bank holiday we ended up staying at the spot for five days. There isn’t too much to do around Princeton but at least we had a free spot for the weekend sorted. Free fresh water available at the Tourist centre and a supermarket in the town to stock up on supplies. At this point I must mention that Canada doesn’t really seem to do cheap end supermarkets like we have back home. The best deals we have found are at a shop called Dollartree. They have cheap tins of soup, beans and other easy meals. Frustratingly I have yet to find a butchers anywhere in Canada. The only place you seem to be able to buy meat at is Walmart and the other supermarkets and everything comes in massive packs for a family of 17. There is no butchers counter where we can buy meat by weight and with only a cool box we cant really buy 5 days worth of meat at a time and hope that it doesn’t spoil, it would just be money wasted. As a result our meat intake has dropped massively. Then again so has my waistline since we arrived in Canada so maybe not a bad thing. We worked things out the other day and we reckon we are spending around $3 a day on food. That equates to about 45p each per meal which is brilliant for our budget…..now if only we could stop drinking we could keep the Canada part of the trip going for quite some time.
Bird at Swan Lake
The five days around Princeton were canny enough. We took a walk up to swan lake to sit and watch the wildlife and birds which was nice. We also got to know our neighbours at the small site a lot better as well. Tom and Terri from Vancouver island. Tom’s now retired and they seem to like it around Princeton so they were parked up long term in their huge homely trailer for a few months until they can get a space at a trailer park further in town. As with all the Canadians we have met so far they have been very kind and helpful, great hosts of their country. We saw Tom the morning after we arrived as we had some heavy rain the night before and the river was rising. He recommended we move up to a high spot that was free so we took his advice as the rain will melt a lot of the ice further up stream at Manning park where we wild camped and can flood further downstream.
When we got back later that night he turned up with a bunch of neatly chainsawed tree trunks ready to be broken up with his axe. I really need to get an axe. I love my Swiss army knife but some times you need the right tool for the job and an axe is defintely the way forward when it comes to camp fires in this part of the world. Tom showed me the technique and I attempted to start chopping my own logs from huge tree trunks. It took quite some time to get going, particularly the first hack to whallop the trunks in half but I got there in the end. He asked us to pop over for coffee after I was done which was a lovely kind gesture. We spent the rest of the night chatting away, drinking coffee in Tom and Terri’s exceptionally homely and spacious trailer. It was beautiful inside. Very retro and immaculate. A bright orange 1950’s fridge Tom had restored, a beautiful huge iron 1920’s stove, even his coffee grinder mounted on the wall was a restored classic from the late 1800’s. The trailer was an absolute cracker. Tom even had a beautiful model railway running the length of the lounge area, it was really quite the trailer.
Chop Chop!
The next few days were a very chilled affair. Reading our books sat out by the river in the baking sun with a few choice local IPA’s and a bottle of Jim Beam Black, all very nice really. We saw Tom and Terri most days for bit craic on and occasionally popped into town for some small supplies, On Saturday morning we headed into town early as there was a farmer’s market on. Unfortunately the market seemed to consist of dear old Agatha selling her home made soap, Toothless Dan from down by the creek selling his tomato seedlings and Mary with her eclectic offering of hand embroidered handkerchiefs and freshly laid eggs. We had hoped for meat but left disappointed, another tumble weed rolled past.
By Sunday we had itchy feet but still stayed at the same spot with it being a bank holiday weekend. The amount of mobile homes, camper vans, huge long trailers and people with what seemed to be entire houses including the kitchen sink trundling by in monster trucks powered by Thor’s hammer was scary. We didn’t think we would be able to find a spot if we did move on but the captive audience price of groceries in Princeton eventually took it’s toll and on the Bank Holiday Monday we finally bid our farewells to Tom and Terri, thanked them for their hospitality and also for the huge amount of freshly chopped fire wood we had crammed into Buddy. It’s been really nice being able to take our time moving through Canada so far. It’s not as if we are in any rush to hurry round all the main tourist sights, it’s so much nicer to move slowly and to get to meet new people along the way. But that said it’s time for pastures new as we creep our way ever closer to the Okanagon Valley and wine country.
