Return to Manning Park in our Roadtrek Zion Campervan!

Limbo time! It would have worked except for the spinal bend. You can see this trail is used for snowshoeing and for bears with big paws. What's that mean? A little bunny. This is the Hope Slide. You can see that whole section came down. We've actually hiked here. You come up over on the left and go right up sort of the ridge up the center and then go up on the right hand side up to the summit. It's obviously a steep hike but the challenge is there's usually a fair amount of rockfall when you're going up. This is actually my favorite part of the drive. There's this meandering creek that goes through the meadows. Usually in summer it's not very deep but deep enough you can maybe paddle a kayak. It's just beautiful. Lots of people here. Oh, it's full I'm sure. It's been a long weekend. We're in 36 so it's still a ways. In the forest again. In some ways it would be nice to park here. These spots unfortunately were already booked when we booked. The ones particularly on the passenger side are right by the river. It's a typical BC campsite where we're well shrouded by trees where our spot is. If it was 25 or 30 degrees we'd be very happy but it's actually about 10 degrees and if we're lucky it'll get up to about 15. 36. We've camped in these ones. Oh, this one would be a bad one. It's flooded. So here's our spot. You can see we've got our own little pond and you can see where the water probably until a day or so ago was running right through here. You can hear the river right behind us. It's not too far. Maybe 50 meters so 150 feet roughly. Beautiful forested area. I was here 6 weeks ago and the snow was I think a meter and a half or almost 2 meters. Quite a change in that time period but we've had a lot of rapid snow melt and then some rain recently and so there's been some flooding and that's probably why we see our pond here. We actually have the front slightly sloped down. I could put a couple little blocks underneath it but it's not enough for us to worry about. Other than that I think it'll be a great spot for us. So you can see the river's outside of its banks. There's not usually I don't know if you can see but with this campsite the water's literally just right behind it. Normally there's a fairly good gap. All driven by the warm weather and we had significant snowfall. So we had a high snowpack and then warm weather and the interesting part of this is actually the beginning of the river. So you can imagine what it looks like as it gets farther down into the Okanagan. Yeah so I'm wearing sandals and there's snow. Mickey just reminded me. But not much snow. The campsite's literally opened the last day or so. And you can see the trails deadfall here. Still easy enough to get through. That mountain right ahead, straight ahead it's more of a bump. Windy Joe. It's one of the hikes we may do here. It's actually a fairly easy hike but this time of year there'll still be snow for a good portion of it. So that'll make it hard enough probably. We might just go from our campsite follow the same trail, go up and then you basically go up the ridge on the right and then cut up the ridge on the left and there's an old forestry lookout that's not used anymore. But it's quite a good view if the weather's nice. And that's the lookout we were at a couple minutes ago just on the other side of the river. Alright so we finished what's known as the 50 minute loop and I think we did it quite a bit faster. Okay so we purchased something called the flat pack grill. There's a mini and then there's the, if you want to call it large size. These are designed actually for backpacking or taking to the beach. First time we've actually used this. It's literally right off it came delivered by Amazon and this is what we got. Wrapped in a nice plastic bag. Very nice cover to come with it. So what we like about it, you can see it's very small, very thin and it only weighs literally a couple of pounds. I know I've seen some people doing YouTube videos about setting this up and they're always wondering what to do with this and the short answer is nothing. It's for actually picking up some of the grill when it gets hot. So the stove itself is incredibly complicated to set up. There we go. The grill, you can see that the grill's just fitting in, just fit the grill over top of those edges on both sides. It would be much easier to do with both hands. You get the idea and it's pretty solid. Now I'm just going to put in some briquettes. Alright and then to get started we've got some of these individually wrapped fire starters I think from Zip. You can leave them in the package and I'm just going to put one on each side and light it and then it'll probably take, I guess anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes before it's ready. In about 15 minutes you can see the coal's starting to form and I've moved this closer to the fire pit just because we're using the table for cooking. This is about 30 minutes. I might try cooking on it maybe in 5 or 10 more. Much slower than a gas barbecue. So this evening I am making some sauteed vegetables and just boiled some white potatoes. I've got some zucchini and broccoli here and some cut up red peppers and Gordon is going to throw on some steak that's been marinated already and some actually vegetarian Tofurky meatloaf sausages for me because I'm vegetarian. And we just had a nappy of cheese crackers and hummus. This is the coals after 45 minutes which should be about right. I actually couldn't wait and put the food on earlier. Bon Appetit! It's our first morning here at Cold Spring Campground at Manning Provincial Park and we've had a little bit of a late start this morning because it's cold first of all. It's about 7 degrees and it's raining and we're hoping that it will clear up a little bit later. I was up a little late but Gordon was up pretty early as usual and went for a walk and did a bit of a workout. And Precious has finally settled down and having a good sleep. It's still early in the year, third week of May, so it's spring in another month or so. This is going to be probably just covered in new growth and flowers and be really beautiful. So you can see whatever bridge was here before. I don't think there is one. Normally there is just this concrete barrier underneath but the water is way too high right now so we're just going to walk around this. The road is not that far away. So we've hiked from our campsite at Cold Spring. It's about 5 kilometers including that little loop that we did. And you can see where we're at right now quite a bit different than when we were camped here 6 weeks ago. Almost the same spot I took the video from before and we'll make sure we show a clip from 6 weeks ago and then you can compare it to what it looks like today. And there's the canoe rental place with the yellow canoes. There's rentals on top and now they've got some canoes out and of course the lake is unfrozen. Still some snow on the side and you can see somebody coming and canoeing across the lake right now. It's 2400 miles from Canada to Mexico. Winding through the Cascade and Sierra Ranges. Here we are. And it's a trail all the way down. This morning we had a nice cloudy but we got a little bit of sun. And this afternoon we've had nothing but little bit bright patches of sun followed by heavy periods of rain like this. We just had dinner and we're waiting for the pouring rain to stop. Hopefully it will soon because otherwise our fire is going to go out. So it's been pouring on and off. When it stops it's beautiful. It's sunny. And then it starts again. So, interesting day. Still, it's a beautiful area. Good morning. It's day 3 here at Manning Park at Coldstream Campground. Last night was cold. I think the temperature got down to about 5 degrees Celsius and our furnace came on a lot. It was a little lazy. We didn't put up the reflectix in any of the windows because it's the third week of May. The consequence of that is the furnace came on, I think, probably every 40 minutes. That was fine. It kept us warm but it was a little bit annoying and we used a little bit more gas than we expected. Tonight I'll make sure I put up the reflectix in the window. I was kind of hoping we were done with cold weather but not yet. Not in the mountains. We also had up on the back window. It's down now but we had a blanket up there. That helped but not as much as I'd like. Today is kind of like yesterday. We've got a little bit of blue patches and a lot of clouds. It's getting a little dark right now. We're hoping to do a trip up Windy Joe. 8 or 9 kilometers from the campsite. So we'll hike up there and then hike back which will be a decent day. So we're pleased. We've been in the snow for probably the last 5 or 7 minutes and now we're back to dirt. Much easier to walk on. We've got a lot more of a southern exposure here. So we've been walking for the last 5 or 7 minutes back on dirt. We'll probably hit snow as we get closer to the summit. Alright, so we're about 5 meters, 15 feet roughly down the Pacific Crest Trail. It's probably as far as we're going to go today as far as heading towards Mexico. We're going to go back up and get up to Windy Joe. So both Mickey and I are saying, when is this trail ever going to end? I think it's a little bit longer than the 7.3km from the sign the trail marker. And of course we added about .8 on top of that from where we came from. But my gut is this is at least 8, maybe 9km. Still lots of snow here near the end. Lightning Lakes are over here. Over here on the right is Mount Frosty. That's actually one of our favorite hikes. It looks far more ominous than it is. You basically go up the ridge and up the back. Long day but very pleasant. And all the mountains back here in the United States. The border is just somewhere in that valley, not too far, probably 3 or 4km away. Bit of deadfall on the trail. This is the worst part though. We're just on the way out. We can still make it through. The rest is usually just some simple logs. But this is a little bit more cumbersome as you can see. Oh, you're such a good girl. You've got a little food mustache. You do. You have a food mustache. That's right. You eat most of your food. Good girl. Good girl. Such a good girl waiting for us. That's going to taste so good. Cheers to a good hike. Oh yes, that's very good. So one of the nicest sandy dump stations I think we're likely ever going to see. Beautiful view. And another view. Good morning. This is our last morning at our campground in Manning Park. And it's a beautiful morning. Gordon's just packing away our foldable tables and chairs. And I'm enjoying my coffee. And look at the view I have. That's our backyard. Beautiful, beautiful day.