Newman strikes again!
Yesterday we had a fantastic visit with Christal and Owen and came back to our RV park in Fort Steele to find that our clothes in our Splendide 2100 washer/dryer combo unit were sitting in a puddle of water, in the bottom of the drum of the machine. Great…..We thought if we ran the dryer again maybe we could dry them out. The problem though was that it was 9:30pm at night when we discovered the wet clothes and the machine is in our bedroom. Turning the machine on meant we would have to listen to it while we were going to sleep. We both were pretty tired so figured why not? Run the machine and hopefully it will work.
Our amazing Splendide washer/dryer combo.
We also didn’t know how to just run a ‘dryer cycle’ as we had never done it before. Richard went and found the manual for the machine and we turned the dryer on and went to sleep listening to the sound of the Splendide 2100 lulling us both to sleep.
This morning we awoke to another pile of wet clothes!!!! GRRRRR!! Richard started his day by calling the Splendide hotline (which was in Oregon and which opened at 8am Pacific time. We are in mountain time in Cranbrook). They said the issue we are having is probably because the belt at the back of the machine has come off. The machine works, but we don’t have any spinning action on the drum. We get water in the drum, but no agitation. We have hot air going in the drum, but again no spinning. The customer service person at Splendide in Oregon gave us the name of a repair person located in Kelowna, B.C. and Richard then proceeded to call them. That person said he didn’t deal with individuals. Usually an RV dealership would bring the broken machine to him to fix. Next we thought we would find an RV dealership in Cranbrook where we are staying, who might have a mobile repair person who could come out and take a look at the machine. After calling 2 RV dealerships in town, we realized, that wasn’t going to work either. RV dealerships are very busy servicing and winterizing people’s RVs right now and they didn’t have time for us. Then we started calling local appliance repair places because they are used to making service calls at people’s homes, so why not at Newman? Apparently appliance repair people are in VERY BIG DEMAND these days as no one was very interested in helping us either!
We left in Jerry this morning with an overflowing laundry basket of clothes to wash later at Jonathan and Christal’s home. We were not sure if the load we did yesterday ever got washed, so we figured we would have to wash that load again too.
We drove up to Lanz Farms in Skookumchuck to meet up with Richard’s son Jonathan, Christal and Owen for a photo shoot in the pumpkin patch. Just as we were about to turn into the pumpkin patch, the fog started rolling in and we could not see the Rocky mountains in the distance!
Crazy how much fog just rolled in all of a sudden!
A great spot for some pumpkin patch photos! Notice the fog in the background. Photographers love fog!
Three generations of ‘Hotte’s’.
What am I gonna do next? I’m stuck in the back of this pick up truck!
I see you!
Owen and his momma
I switched to a wide angle lens, which I bought after we got home from B.C. in April. It’s a game changer for some of these mountain shots!
The fog is lifting. What a beautiful stunning background for these photos! The old pick up isn’t bad either for a photo shoot!
I want to get over there but I’m not quite walking yet. Hmm, what should I do?
Crawl it out of course!
Grandpa surveying the big farm equipment.
And the fog has lifted! I’m so glad we were able to get some shots at the pumpkin patch while the fog was still around.
After seeing Jonathan, Christal and Owen we headed over to Kimberley to do some shopping and have some lunch. Kimberley is a very quaint ski town and is known as the ‘City of Festivals’; a very cute pedestrian downtown called the ‘Platzl’ is where most of the festivals take place.
There wasn’t much going on today at the Platzl.
An excellent kitchen store which I didn’t go in today, as Newman is very well stocked in that department!
We decided we would have lunch in a very cute little spot on the Platzl called ‘Creme Cheese Shop’. Thankfully I had downloaded our B.C. Vaccine passports to be able to show them at the restaurant, so we were able to sit and eat in the restaurant at lunch.
Creme menu board and cheese cabinet.
And a glass of wine was only $3.95 more with lunch, so of course we had to get some rose to go with our meal.
Ploughman’s lunch at ‘Creme’. We chose the 3 sides, and they chose the cheeses. A delightful homemade carrot potato soup too! Richard’s lunch.
I had a few different cheeses and sides….
We wandered around the Platzl and Richard proceeded to keep making phone calls to local appliance repair people, as well as calling Midtown RV in Penticton and Peddar Bay RV Park on Vancouver Island to determine who does their repairs on RV washing machines. Richard was striking out and it was frustrating him, as we do not want to continually make trips to a laundromat on this trip. The nicest thing about doing laundry in an RV is you put it in the machine, leave and come back and its done! Small loads, every day and never having to go to a laundromat and wait for the laundry to be done!
Richard was ‘working the phone’ as he likes to call it sitting outside on a bench in the Platzl.
Heading back to Cranbrook from Kimberley, we drive through a very small town called ‘Marysville’. There is a golf course in town which is never open whenever we are here that I want to play called ‘Bootleg Gap’. Today we could see that the green’s crew had punched the fairways to prepare the course for the winter. The course looked like it was in excellent condition, but was now closed for the winter. Another time I guess!
As we were driving through Marysville I saw this beautiful wooden bridge so I asked Richard to quickly pull over so I could take a photo of it.
Wooden bridge in Marysville, B.C.
A beautiful wooden bridge. I wonder where it leads to?
I saw a sign as I was taking a photo of the bridge that said there was a Marysville Waterfall so when I got back into Jerry, I asked Richard if he had ever seen the waterfall in Marysville. He said he had never seen the falls, so we found a place to park and started hiking down the path towards the falls.
Wondering if this is all there is to the waterfalls?
Ok, making progress. A bit more water falling here!
Ok, a slightly bigger waterfall!
Ok now that’s a waterfall! The Marysville Falls Waterfall is 30 metres high.
The requisite selfie of course to prove we were both hiking the trail!
A nice short hike, but a beautiful waterfall that we discovered together. It’s so nice to be back in B.C. and find these random waterfalls that are so gorgeous! The weather was nice to! A sunny day with a high temperature of 13C. All in all a beautiful fall day.
As we got back to the car in Marysville, Richard finally received a phone call from an appliance repair person who was willing to come to Newman and take a look at our washer/dryer combo. Yeah! Now that’s persistence on Richard’s part. The repair person is located in Wasa which is about 17 minutes due north of us on the way to Skookumchuk. Don’t you just love saying the name of that town! S-K-O-O-K-UM-CHUCK! Anyway, we are very happy that the repair person is coming to take a look tomorrow between 8:30pm and 9am. We are only in Cranbrook until Saturday morning, so we really need this machine fixed! Hopefully it is just the belt and Richard and the repair person can get the heavy machine out of its cabinet to be able to work on it tomorrow!
After visiting Marysville Falls, we headed back to Cranbrook to have a delicious home cooked turkey dinner that Christal prepared for us. YUM! It’s so nice to visit with family and the family dinner was a bonus!
Owen was up from his nap and we enjoyed some playtime together on the floor. At 14 months Owen doesn’t have any teeth yet. We think he is teething though as his cheeks are very red, he is drooling a lot and he’s rubbing his gums with his hands. Hopefully he gets those teeth soon!
After a lovely visit with Christal, Jonathan and Owen we brought our washed and dryed laundry home to Newman. Not everything was fully dry though, so we have a lot of laundry hanging up at the front of Newman, to hopefully dry overnight! Oh the joys of living in an RV when things don’t work 100%. We thought Newman was over his old tricks from last year, but it appears he isn’t. Hopefully fingers crossed tomorrow everything will be fixed and we can be on our way again on Saturday with a working washer/dryer combo!
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