The last attraction for the trip – Revelstoke’s 3 Valley Gap Ghost Town. It is a 15 minutes drive from Revelstoke and located right next to the Trans Canada Highway and the 3 Valley Lake.
Actually, it was also right next to our hotel – the 3 Valley Lake Chateau. My mom has stayed here before and suggested we go to the ghost town next door (also owned by the same group as the hotel). Normally it costs $12 but it was $5 for tour groups.
We checked into our hotel room first, which was on the second floor and did not have WiFi. We had to go to the rec room or the lobby for WiFi. On the bright side, the suite looked into the beautiful garden and we had a balcony with chairs. The hotel was a little bit old but because the room faced inwards towards all the other rooms, it felt safer.
We were back to low definition television and the shower required a lot of strength to activate but it was still pretty good. There were free kayak rentals but I didn’t try since there was no lifeguard on premise. There is also a souvenir store and a restaurant. I saw a few people from the tour group buying cup noodles and even an entire meal from the restaurant since our dinner had been less than stellar. My mom said the steak is great at the restaurant. There was hot water in the hallways.
Back to the ghost town .. It closes at 8 PM and it was preparing to close around 7 P.M., so we had to buy the tickets at the front desk. They gave us a token to enter the gate, which is located next to the parking lot.
The ghost town is meticulously put together by the owner of the hotel, acquiring old buildings from actual ghosts towns or historically important buildings that were preparing for demolition. Among them was the Craigellachie School House (taken from the town of where the last railway nail was spiked), the St. Stephen’s Church and Hotel Bellevue (which is dark, slightly worn down and the top candidate for actually having any ghosts).
There was a town called 3 Valley Gap located near the current location but nothing of that remains. Here in this ghost town, there was a barbershop, saloon, two schools, a jail house, sheriff posts, coal mine, garage for old cars and even a Roundhouse that houses real used train carts. Just to make it more creepy, they had mannequins guarding the store front … and a ghost train.
There weren’t a lot of visitors, so you can feel free to have a photo day!
The hotel is pretty dim at night .. I would suggest bringing a flashlight, especially if you are going to go through the garden to the the lobby. The doors to the hallways are always open so my friend actually saw a little mouse trying to run into the door gap (but alas it was too fat).
In the morning, we had breakfast at their cafe inside the souvenir store. It is created like a dining room train cart overlooking the Three Valley Lake. Breakfast was pretty filling and not long, we had to check out.
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For the next 7 hours, we just sat on the bus while the tour guide talked from broken gags to previous trips, to anything and everything …
From Revelstoke to Vancouver, the journey was estimated to be about 6 -7 hours without stopping. For us, including a one hour lunch, we arrived in Vancouver at 2 PM (we left at 7 AM). That is completely unheard of in a tour to arrive back so early … So we toured Vancouver on a hop on hop off bus…
August 2016.
Miga in Vancouver 