Friday Jul 19 Cool & windy Trail, BC
It was cool overnight, 49F when I woke just after 0500 this morning. No, I went back to bed for a couple more hours.
After breakfast this morning Jen suggested we drive east towards Salmo. Up the big hill just a couple of clicks east of us and through the little hamlet of Montrose at the top. Not much to see there so we continued on through Fruitvale to Salmo.
A quick turnaround at Salmo (I forgot all about going to the grocery store there - they have a number of radio control airplanes suspended from the ceiling). We'll have to visit again before we leave the Kootenays.
Part way up the hill out of Trail we looked down on the local airport.
Then just a little further, on the outskirts of Fruitvale we saw Atco Wood Products, a family run business. Click on the link to read about their fascinating history.
But what was really interesting was this...
And these, high cube box cars being loaded with product as we drove by...
On the way back from Salmo, the diesel and box cars were gone. Turns out, as I was told later, Atco runs their loaded cars to an interchange at Columbia Gardens, just south of Trail on the way to the border. BNSF picks them up there and takes them into the US. We knew the cars went west as sitting on the track to the east of Atco was an old passenger car.
Okay, so it's not a place you would want to stay for any length of time, but for a quick overnight or two, full hookups for $25/nt is very reasonable. There's even a creek at the back of the sites. Pretty.
As we came down the hill into Trail, Jen snapped this pic.
That's it for today. Tomorrow we're going to check out the dams on the Pend d'Oreille river down by the border. Join us then.
Entering Fruitvale, just beside the Welcome sign, was a notice for the local, full service, RV park. We parked Alfie on the main street, walked around "downtown", and checked out the RV park.
