Day 8: Celebrating Our 20th Anniversary in An RV

Our 8th day on the road to Alaska in 2007, was also our 20th wedding anniversary! The trip was Doug's gift to me, but I wanted to have some small gift to give him in recognition of the occasion. So I had made a photo book for him, with pictures from our life together.

For the cover of the photo book, I used a professionally done photograph that we had made in December of 1986, while we were dating.

This is one page of the book, with a couple of pictures taken during our Hawaiian honeymoon in 1987.

I gave him a card and the photo book that morning. He was really touched by the photo book. I don't think I could have given him anything that would have meant more to him.

We broke camp (Doesn't that sound as if we'd been doing this camping thing all our lives?) and got on our way that morning, deciding to take Canada Highway 3 to Hope, BC. It was a beautiful drive all the way. At first, Doug was a little tense and uncomfortable with not being on U.S. soil and not knowing whether we were going to get stuck out in the wilderness somewhere. Also, we had some pretty steep hills and downgrades, and we were learning that Harvey just didn't perform well on those hills.

Then we hit the very busy, very touristy town of Osoyoos. That just about finished Doug off. But we stopped at a McDonald's; and, while Doug went in and got coffee for him and iced tea for me, I fixed sandwiches for our lunch in the RV. He perked up after that and seemed to really enjoy the trip.

Overlooking Osoyoos, BC

Checking maps at McDonald's in Osoyoos

You can see our tripod lying on the floor in the above picture. It's how we took pictures of ourselves along the way. And can you see that console between the two captain's chairs? We found that in an auto supply store for fifteen dollars. It had been languishing on a shelf in their back room, apparently for years, judging by the dust on the box. They seemed glad to sell it for any price, and we were thrilled to get it for fifteen dollars.

Canada Highway 3 - Keremeos to Princeton

Beaver Pond at Manning Provincial Park, East of Hope, BC

We pulled into Hope, BC about 5:00 p.m. and drove to the Wild Rose RV Park to reserve a space for the night. After registering, we drove back into Hope and had our anniversary dinner at the Home Restaurant.

Then we returned to the RV park, got Harvey all hooked up, and visited with our chatty neighbors, who were from Vancouver Island and were huge Nascar fans, but not huge Jeff Gordon fans. After visiting with them for awhile, we took a short walk through the RV park before settling down to do some reading before bedtime.