MOBILE TENTAS! North American Tour 2022: Day 6 : July 12/22 Tuesday. Fruitvale to White Swan (Alces/Moose Lake)

Our odometer reads 102676km as we depart Fruitvale. Considering the fairly leisurely pack up and goodbyes, we got driving at 10am and that seemed not half bad for our family, haha. We went into the little town to the sani-dump and that's where we realized we didn't have the other set of RV keys! After searching the rig and texting with Heather and Brad, we decided we had to drive back to their place and search the grass around the place we had parked the rig. In an epiphany, I remembered that Jonathan had asked me to throw the keys in the glovebox of Heather's car when we drove to Castlegar 😅 and at the time I thought, "this is a bad idea, I'm going to forget about these" but did it anyway. Sure enough, the keys were in there and we were back on the road AGAIN 40 minutes later.

We drove the 3B east, hopped onto the #21 around Creston bypass and back onto Hwy#3 to Yahk. Saw a weird sight just outside of Creston... a small tanker/dump(?) truck was completely upside down with shattered glass on a small driveway/road leading into some kind of an industrial site on the opposite side of the road. Looked like it had happened, and seemed surreal as to how it would have ended up on it's back in such a short space.

Got to Yahk around 12:15pm and stopped at the little general store for a much needed coffee for me, and to make some food for the kiddos. The super nice cashier had just put a fresh pot of coffee on, so we wandered the aisles while it was brewing. For such a tiny store, they sure had a lot of stuff! After purchasing coffees and chocolate bars, Jonathan got to work on cooking some scrambled egg wraps for us all, and I went back into the shop for a case of cold Budweiser and some BlackFly vodka fizz drinks to give them some more business and also be prepped for camping up a mountain for three nights!

By 3pm we arrived in Cranbrook and went to the Walmart for groceries (and more). Jonathan popped into the SportChek to see if they had any sunglasses he wanted. Had fun shopping for groceries with the kids and we managed to load up on all the treats and goodies needed for a successful camping excursion... tiny sugar cereal boxes made the list, of course. As did two medium sized water guns and a 5-pack of mini water pistols, a small baseball bat, snorkel kit with flippers/mask/snorkel, and lots of candy. We also found the mini-usb cable here for our Garmin and Walkie-Talkies. By 4:20pm we were out of there and had hit up the town sani-station to fill our tank with fresh drinking water.

From Cranbrook we drove Hwy 93/95 North for about an hour before the turnoff for White Swan Provincial Park. We had passed a diesel station a little while back and Jonathan thought we could make it. He really wanted to push the limits on the tank and break 500km from the last fill. We left it to chance as we turned up the Lussier Forest Service Road and left pavement behind for a dusty, washboard gravel road.

20km up the mountain road, with sheer cliff drops on one side for parts of it, we made it to Moose (Alces) Lake Campground around 6pm. Jonathan's middle brother, Alan, and Lisa were already up there and had saved site #24 for us in this little FCFS campground. $22/night for three nights! pretty amazing price considering some of the rates we have paid in the past at campgrounds and RV sites. Our km at arrival was 102989km on the odometer.

Jonathan, Ollie and Amelia went for an evening swim in the lake while I made chickpea pasta for dinner. Jonathan had meal planned trout for dinner, but we would have to wait until the next day for that meal! Alan and Jonathan went fishing and Al caught a big beautiful rainbow trout!! Lisa was bagged and fell asleep, while I walked with the kids to the day parking and attempted to play ball with our new bat. Meems had more success with the bocce bean bags, as Oliver kept hitting the ball into the bushes with the bat. We switched to throwing the ball, and then to throwing the bean bag to prevent the excessive ball rolling into prickles. We walked to the lake/beach and saw tons of butterflies, then back to our campsite to play Sleeping Queens. Kids were just getting silly and punchy when Al and Jsy came back with their catch. Visited with Alan in our RV until late and then threw the kids into bed.