He Said:Little smoky today but still roasting hot. Today we hit the road with no hard plans, other than knowing G wanted to do the rope adventure in Revelstoke and highway 93 between Banff and Jasper was closing periodically to fight a forest fire. Another long(ish) drive, but we stopped at Mara Lake for lunch. Mara was pretty excited. Shannon did some legwork while we were driving and hooked us up with a room at 3 Valley Gap. I've driven by that place every summer for decades, but have never stopped It's an interesting place. Definitely dated, but architecturally unique. No AC. U-shaped with a nice garden in the centre. There's a muggy indoor pool dedicated to the Titanic. A giant checker board. Couple restaurants. Library with books/puzzles. According to the bio, they balked at paying the millions the gov't demanded to bring power in, and instead made their own through the use of two dams. Anyway. It's old, it's dated, but it's interesting. We were about 7 minutes away from it when traffic came to a standstill. Turns out a semi had flipped over rounding a corner.
She Said:We ate lunch at club house at the golf course at Mara Lake. I forget the actual name of the course. Anyway, somebody told me once it's a good idea to eat at club houses in smaller centres because the food is always good. I won't name who that advice giver was, because in this case it was not true. We ordered a club house sandwich and a beef dip for me and Brad, and the kids shared ribs. Nothing too fancy - but somehow they screwed it up. Not cooked well, and they tried to get fancy with the mayonaise and it didn't work. Oh well. Still cool for Mara to eat at Mara Lake. We looked up if there is also a Shannon Lake (duh - Phil lives there), Brad lake, Ryan lake and Gillian lake. Sure enough. And Lake Bradley and Ryan Lake are only 100 miles apart in Oregon. Gillian Lake is in NWT I think. Cool.
I can't believe that on a hot day that we stayed at a place with no A/C and a heated pool. Ha! I guess we should have jumped in the lake for a cool down. We were a little unimpressed with the food there too. Perhaps we were just getting sick of eating out. We had a nice time though.