The Death Rattle – July 17th

Another great sunny day.  The drive from Creston to Trail, BC was very beautiful with 1700m of elevation which was not much of an issue.  The grades however were a totally different story.  We encountered many 7% grades in Northern Ontario and east of Creston. However, they are no match for the length of the 10-13% grades just east of Salmo.  Unfortunately because of this we had to use the brakes more, along with the tow/haul.  While we drove incredibly well, in our opinion, up and down and around the curves, the RV seemed to have had a mind of its own on the steepest descent and went into a 30 second shake event that we had never experienced, and hope we never will again. It was rough, loud and unexplainable, we thought the sides of the RV were going to fall off.  There was no warning light of any kind. It was like your car ABS system kicking in x1000. Frankly this is the first time we went beyond nervous to concerned, and frankly we will admit we were scared.  We remember Lori saying when it started, “I don’t know what to do”. We stopped as soon as we could at a local gas station, as once again there were no shoulders nor runaway lanes on this stretch.  We did a walk around and smelled the tires and area to check if there had been any burning, but found nothing. We stayed for about 20 minutes for things to cool down and by things we mean brakes, our nerves and the animals panting.

While it should have been an easy drive for the remaining 40 km to our HH location at a local Kootenay Lake winery, we were still quite rattled.  As we pulled in, Barb recalled Lori had exclaimed right after the shaking incident “This winery better have F#$% amazing wine!  After this we deserve it”.  

The property was beautiful, with a lot of cherry trees! We had a ton of fun picking as much as we wanted, and we took a few bowls on the road with us. Our host Ben did warn us about the bears though, of course there are bears around after the crap drive we had, as they also love the “free” cherries. UGH

We had arranged ahead of time to have a charcuterie and wine tasting. Ben laid out an incredible spread for us to pair with his apparent award winning wines. He was extremely generous serving us 9 different whites and reds. We say ‘apparent’ award winning as despite awards up on the walls, the wine was unpalatable.  Can you believe that between the two of us we couldn’t find any wine worth drinking. Barb totally took one for the team after Lori very directly told Ben “I can’t drink this. It’s terrible”. Barb said “I don’t know Lori, I like this” and kept on downing glass after glass to be polite. Well….partially to be polite and partially to recover and hopefully forget ‘the death rattle’ experience.

We have decided, after discussing with Ben, that it would be prudent to seek out the Ford dealership in the morning to check out our brakes before we hit another steep mountain decline.