Gary and Tracie Ride North America's Longest Free Ferry

Traice and I left Cardston Saturday afternoon at about 1:30. We headed towards Waterton and then went north to Pincher Creek. We got some food at the Co-op in Pincher Creek. (pics of food to follow) We ate and then headed west on the #3 Highway. We stopped to see lundbreck falls, by the way if any government types are reading this, the out houses don't have any T.P. I found this out the hard way. I shouted for Tracie for like 5 minutes from the top of the hole, but she couldn't hear me because of the roaring waterfall.

We stopped at the Colierer (sp?) just before Frank, then we stopped at the interprative center at Frank Slide. The have a big sign in the parking lot that says "admission fee". I guess they got sick of telling people that it cost $6.50 to go in. We didn't feel like going in, so we didn't. Athough they have very nice bathroom facilities.

From there we drove straight on through to Sparwood, where we stopped to see the world's largest truck, and to check our bankbook balance. We have pics of the Truck, and printouts of our bank balances.

After Sparwood, it was pretty uneventful all the way to Crestin. Crestin is beautiful this time of year, all the fruit trees have blooms. One thing that you have to remember is that if you are going to Vancouver on the #3 highway. You have to turn off in Crestin to stay on the #3. Tracie was driving, and suddenly I see a sign that say #3a. This seems weird to me, but Tracie got on the wrong road near sparwood, and I made her turn around right away, so this can't be a repeat. We trade off right away, and I continue on. The road going north from Crestin is possibly one of the windy-est roads I have ever been on. It started to get dark, and I drove about 45 minutes in the complete dark. We saw more deer than cars on that road.

Finally we get to the end of the road, which seems weird because I didn't think we were getting to go on a boat ride. We drove over to the signs, and look. Apparently you can go to Nelson, B.C. on this road, but you have to take a 40 minute ferry ride. Tracie had gone the wrong way in Crestin and we ended up taking a long detour.

I was really excited to go on the ferry though so it turned out to be a fantastic mistake. By pure luck be got there at 9:00, 20 minutes after the second last boat left. An hour later we got onto the boat for a 40 minute ride on North-America's longest free ferry. I loved it the whole way. We were on the deck for a while, and the boat started rocking quite a bit, so I made rocking motions, and Tracie says to me, "Quit rocking the boat!" As if I could budge a boat that holds 30 cars. She realized that as soon as she said it.

There were no hotels in Nelson, so we came to Castlegar (My castle is here but was sadly destroyed in an earthquake) and got a room in the Sandman.

-Gary Milner