Caught an evening flight out of Auckland flying 14 hours to Vancouver. Uneventful flight as we all hope for except for some antics by a number of the passengers. One woman tried to stop someone from putting luggage in the overhead compartment that had her row number on it. She thought these were just reserved for the people sitting in that row! Then across the aisle from them a couple of passengers exchanged heated words when the luggage compartment above one of them opened unexpectedly and a backpack fell on him. He blamed the owner of the backpack for ramming it in when there was not enough room and then for not closing the compartment properly. This was all before we had taken off. As we landed someone then thought it was ok to stand up just as we were about to land. An announcement and lots of yelling by crew finally sorted it out.

As if all that wasn't enough the car rental company eventually tracked down our rental vehicle having thought we had not gone to the right place to retrieve it. They did apologize after they realized they had given us the wrong licence plate number but the right keys! So we are no old forgetful people afterall. Things finally started working when we easily found our way out of the airport onto the main highway heading east. Probably helped it being on a Sunday. Two accidents on the other side of the highway would have frustrated many Vancouverites returning home after a weekend or day out of the city. No such delays for us - yea!

Hope is a small town snuggled into a valley at the entrance to the Rocky Mountains from the west. We easily found our quaint little motel - the WIndsor. There are many wooden carvings throughout the town some of which you will see in the attached photos. Had a lovely dinner at the Wallace Street Restaurant next door and the next morning started the day with coffee etc from the Blue Moose Cafe which probably had the best coffee we have ever had in Canada. We were hoping it was a chain but google tells us it is not. Had forgotten that GST is not included in the price of items but is added on when you are paying. Annoying but hey - so is Bruce some times!