Canada Day in Revelstoke

July 1^st, 2012

As you can gather by reading Ben’s previous post, yesterday was a crazy day for all of us. Even though we somehow enjoyed the crazy adventure of trying to get out of rainy Nakusp, we were all very happy to make it to dryness in our hotel room in Revelstoke last night. We were all very exhausted and slept very comfortably and soundly until about 6:30 am when Zaid woke us up.

Our plan for today was to watch the Canada Day celebrations we read about in the town’s visitor’s guide, visit the local railway museum and the BC Hydro Revelstoke Dam.

We are sure that there was some Canada Day celebrations going on, however when we arrived at the town centre this morning at 8:45 am there was no sign of anything. Most stores and shops were closed and a drive to the Dam also revealed that it is closed until 10:00am. Hoping that there will be something to do in this town before 10 am we stopped to ask at the information centre. We happily learned that the railway museum is open at 9:00 am and after purchasing a cute train conductor hat for Zaid and getting our BC Parks Passport stamped we headed to there. 

The Revelstoke Railway Museum was a great hit with all members of the family and a perfectly fitting way to celebrate Canada Day by learning about the history of the Canada Pacific Railway.  The museum had the magical combination of being interesting to the adults and exciting to the children. Zaid who is obsessed with all things that go, loved it! We all especially loved the real old CPR train on display. We were able to go inside the business car and look at the tiny bedrooms and dining room on the train. We ended the tour with a stop at the kids play room where Zaid played with little Thomas trains and other train related toys. 

Ben and Zaid at the Railway Museum 

After our visit to the railway we went home for naptime and then left again for a picnic lunch by the river.  Then knowing that the Dam must be open now, we headed over there for a quick visit.

The Dam was not a great hit with Zaid who preferred to run around the place like a crazy person but both Ben and I enjoyed it. The last section of it included more interactive displays about power and electricity and that was interesting enough to keep Zaid engaged.  He pushed buttons to train light bulbs on and pushed pedals to activate static electricity or use sunlight to power a small model train.

The Revelstoke Dam

The Dam visit tired us out enough to warrant a trip back to the hotel for some rest, following which we head out again for dinner. Seeing that the weather was sunny and warm we decided to take out a couple of pie from a local pizza place to eat by the river again. We picked up our pizzas and drove to the river side and spread our food on the picnic table to eat. We immediately noticed a small grey cloud way out in the distance and joked about how with our luck this cloud is going to move straight to just above our heads and rain on us.  Ten minutes later this is exactly what happened! In fact come to think of it, it did rain a little bit on us when we were having our lunch picnic as well. So keeping with Ben’s Harper’s index this makes the number of picnics on which we were rained on 4 and the number of picnics on which we had no rain 0!

After our dinner we stopped at a playground for Zaid to play and then drove back to our hotel to get ready for the evening bed time routine. Zaid was a bit riled up but fell asleep not too much later than his usual bed time. Owen has been asleep since we came back from dinner and I suspect he will only briefly wake again for some milk before I go to sleep myself.

I had read about Revelstoke in their visitor’s guide before getting here and based on that expected a more lively town.  I’m not sure if it is the holiday Sunday or the fact that anything after the excitement of Nakusp is bound to feel dull, but this is exactly how I found it here. The museum and Dam were very interesting but the town itself was nothing too exciting.

Tomorrow we head out bright and early to Banff for four days of camping and then off to Calgary for a couple of days. This is going to be my first time in Alberta and I am very intrigued.  Let’s hope the weather forecast holds true and we get the sunshine and little to no rain that it promises. Keep your fingers crossed!

Haifa