We treated ourselves to a pricelined hotel room in Vancouver on Sunday night, and since it was only a few hours from Seattle, we were able to see some of the city. After living in Los Angeles, every city we have visited so far has felt compact and walkable. Leaving Vancouver, we entered the parade of hockey towns. Following Cornell hockey religiously means that in the offseason Phil keeps tabs on college hockey recruiting, a hotbed of which is southern British Columbia. Once mythical places like Burnaby (home of the Express) Salmon Arm (the Silverbacks) and Kamloops (the Jr. Blazers) were now real. We had wanted to make it to Nanaimo for a Clippers game to cheer on future Cornell freshmen Joe and Mike Devin, but the BCHL schedule and ours didn’t mesh.
Monday night we camped on Tonkwa Lake, just south of Kamloops. While Patrick’s Point in northern California still ranks as our favorite spot so far, this campground was worth recommending. The individual sites lacked privacy, but the setting along the bank of the lake boasted an amazing view and the near-constant sound of salmon jumping out of the water. The other dominant sound in the area were the moos of a cattle herd we encountered along the road—a somewhat incongruous combination.