After a few days searching in Vancouver we found our perfect American car! A 2002 Dodge Dakota 4WD. It has a beautiful sounding 5.8L v8 engine and is Quad cab with plenty of room for people in the back seat! We were so worried we were going to buy a lemon but we got it checked out and it’s gotten us to Revelstoke fine, and it’s handled the icy roads and cold starts really well! (touch wood)
We bought the car, picked it up at midday on Thursday the 21st and headed towards Revelstoke. Only a couple of hours into the drive and it started to get dark so as we didn’t know the roads we decided to stop for the night in Hope… Hope is about 2 hours out of Vancouver, and it was another 4 hours to Revelstoke from there. We had a nice sleep in and headed to Revelstoke the next morning. The drive was beautiful! Mountains and snow most of the way, waterfalls frozen into ice on the edges of the road, below are some photos of that drive from Hope to Revelstoke.
An old friend from Vancouver put us in touch with people they knew living in Revelstoke and literally as we drove into town we got a message inviting us around to their place for a BBQ! What a welcome!! Before we headed there we rang the local Rental Agency to see what houses were left. They only had 3, 1 bedroom old dumpy apartments left…. Eeek! We then decided to quickly head to other Real Estate agents in town and while only dealing with House Sales,they tried to think up empty houses they knew of or people they knew who might be renting out places. We found everyone really helpful in this whole process! One of the Real Estate agents had a little B&B suite available and gave it to us at a decent rate for as long as we needed until we found a place. So that was handy as we realised it was going to take a bit of asking around and checking out to find a place.
That first weekend we arrived we were invited to someone’s house every night of the weekend and a couple more during the week! It was a really nice surprise for a place we had no idea about and where we knew nobody!!! We went to the meeting that Sunday and everyone started to think about and ask around about rentals. The town here is about 7,000 in size and swells to 10,000 in the winter. All the skiers and sledders come to town for the whole winter, thus the expensive rent, trucks with sleds on them everywhere and lack of available places. People started coming here in September to get a place for the winter. So the competition was fierce.
The congregation is bigger than we expected. It has about 80 publishers and has been bigger in the past. It’s mostly made up of older ones and young families. There are quite a few teenage boys, and only 2 teenage girls! There’s one Aussie boy from Perth who’s our age too which we’ve clicked with straight away (funny about that). We are the only young(ish) married couple so that’ll be interesting! A bit different to St Kilda where it was all young married couples and singles! 🙂
Anyway, we definitely are very lucky to be part of such a beautiful International Family! Not sure how easy it would have been to work everything out if we didn’t have our community straight away! Turns out one of the brothers we first met asked at his work if anyone knew of places going around! One of his workmates just finished turning their basement into an apartment. They offered it to us furnished, and at a much cheaper rate than all the other crappy dumpy rentals in town. So the place is cheaper, brand new, furnished and in a good location! It all worked out in the end! We moved in on Sunday just past.
The town is pretty cool and has everything we need from Grocery stores, cafes, snow board and ski shops a plenty, even a nice clothing store!! The local cinema was playing a Warren Miller film the first weekend we were here and we all went and saw that. This last weekend past was opening day at the Ski Hill, so we went up boarding for the day and to a Wine Tasting festival that night at the Lodge at the hill! I think we’re more social here than we were in Melbourne! 🙂
We went for a drive today about 15 mins to the local Dam. It’s a really beautiful spot and will be gorgeous in Summer as well. All the locals say that they love Summer more than winter here. While winter is great, the things to do in Summer are endless… They go fishing, camping, dirt biking, mountain biking, hiking, kayaking, golfing…. you name it it’s here in summer! Then in winter there’s the ski hill and the community events in town. They even have squash courts here! Although I don’t think many people play! haha
So I’ll post some more pics of our place and shots around town shortly….
Looking forward to seeing you all when you come and visit! Hint, hint, nudge, nudge. Oh, and don’t worry about accommodation. All the locals in the cong have offered us their RVs and homes for guests that visit! We might get a bigger place come summer time when there’s more availability too. We also have a fold out sofa bed… hehe! So come on… UP!! 🙂
xx
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