The End...

...of my time at Sunshine Village, anyway...

After waking up on Tuesday and feeling rather funny, I decided to wake up the others and see if they felt the same. They did... So we wandered over to Staff Cafe for our final breakfast together. With plates of sausages, hash browns and egg etc etc in front of us, we signed each others' Canadian flags, and when Steve and I went back to Sunburst we said goodbye to Georgie and Jeremy for the last time.

One speed-pack later and I was in HR signing out for good ("Have you hoovered your room?" "Erm, George said she'd do it for me." "What about posters etc?" "Well, she wanted to keep them up to remind her of me..." "Oh."), before running (tumbling) down the slope to where the bus was just about to leave to travel back down to the car park.

Another rollercoaster ride later, I was helping Danny and Sam pack their car for our journey to Invermere, on their way to Osoyoos. "We'll need a packer of epic proportions" said Danny, while observing the pile of luggage, food, bedding and longboard that needed to be stuffed into the small Honda.

I stepped forward, and one pack of 'epic proportions' later, everything including the 3 humans were stuffed in the car. I told Danny exactly what would kill him if we crashed, and he accepted his fate with a chuckle...

So we set off onto the open road for our 2-hour long trip to Invermere. If Danny and Sam hadn't been routing via Invermere on the way to Osoyoos, they would have travelled along Highway 1- and met a mudslide on the way. Lucky I tagged along, then...

As we headed west, the sky was looking very soarable, although the air in the valley was gradually filling with smoke. Various theories tried to explain this but just as the smoke reached its thickest, we passed a sign proclaiming 'Perscribed burn in progress'.

But an hour and a half later we were entering the Columbia Valley, the long open space in the centre of the Rockies where Invemere and other towns are situated. And 10 minutes later, I was waving Danny and Sam off, while standing in the entrance to Invermere Soaring Centre.