Fairmont Hot Springs, BC, Canada Weekend

What a terrific long weekend we had! On Friday, we (Tom, me, Shana, Ryan, Olivia, and Tyler) loaded up the Suburban (our trusty steed) with food, clothing, and the necessary toiletries, and headed to the Great White North – Canada. Our destination – Fairmont Hot Springs, BC, Canada. Tom and I have a timeshare in Las Vegas at the Tahiti Resort. Ours is a two bedroom deluxe – sleeps 8 –model, which means we can exchange for two one-week stays in a one bedroom, sleeps 4 (or bigger), condo pretty much anywhere in the world for a nominal exchange fee. That’s how we’re going to the UK – we’re exchanging for two one-week stays in a 2 bedroom, 2 bath cottage in Great Britain for $150 each week. Anyway, since we have the timeshare, through our exchange company, Interval International, we can buy “getaways” – weeklong stays at various timeshares all over the world – at greatly reduced prices and without giving up any of our weeks. We knew we wanted to go to a hot springs, but were undecided whether to go Ainsworth Hot Springs or Fairmont.

Ainsworth is cool, but there is nothing else to do there but go in the hot springs pools, and the road to Ainsworth is narrow and winding and kind of scary in the winter. There’s no town of Ainsworth. There is one restaurant, and the room sleeps 5, so we’d be sneaking Tyler in, and we’d be on the crowded side. It was going to cost us $260 to stay for two nights at Ainsworth.

Fairmont, on the other hand, is a little town with a grocery store, restaurants, and a couple of little shops. A much larger town, Invermere, is only 20 minutes away. If we got bored and wanted to just walk through a quaint little tourist town, we could head to Invermere, or even to Radium, about 40 minutes north, which has a very cool hot springs and tons of mountain goats and Rocky Mountain Bighorn sheep on the craggy peaks above the hot springs. Fairmont just seemed like a much better idea. So, I checked Interval to see what was available in Fairmont, and learned we had our pick of 4 different resorts – Fairmont Villas at Riverside, Hillside, Riverview, or Mountainside. After checking out the info on the Interval website, we decided to go to Fairmont and stay at the villas at the Riverside resort. We would have a two-bedroom, two-bath, sleeps 8 condo with a full kitchen, a kitchenette, two living rooms, and 4 TV’s (no fighting among the kids over what to watch). The cost? $304 for a week! Too bad we could only stay for three days.

View from our condo patio.

Friday morning we loaded up and left Sandpoint at 9:30 AM. We had just had two days of snow and winds and the forecast was for even more, with travel advisories in place for northern Idaho and eastern Washington, but the forecast for the Fairmont area was partly cloudy and no snow. As we headed out, the roads were snow-packed, it was snowing, and it was slow going. By the time we hit Cranbrook, BC, about two hours north of Sandpoint, the road conditions had improved, but it was still cloudy and snowing lightly. We arrived at our resort in Fairmont at 1:30 PM, about half an hour longer than it usually takes to get there. Check-in time at the resort was 4PM but I figured we should see if we could get in early. If we couldn’t, we could always go up to the hot springs and hang out there until we could check in. Well, I completely forgot that Fairmont is on Mountain Standard Time, so instead of being 1:30, it was 2:30. They told us at the desk that we could check in at 3PM, so we only had half an hour to kill. We were welcome to use the recreation area of the resort while we waited, so we checked out the pool, hot tub, game room, children’s play area, and movie room. It is a super nice resort!

They show a movie every night at 7:30 in the upstairs movie room on a big screen TV. Friday and Saturday they were showing Because of Winn-Dixie, a movie I’ve heard of but have never seen. We thought maybe the kids would enjoy seeing that that night. Finally 3:00 arrived and we went downstairs to check in. The resort was pretty much empty. They are in the process of renovating several of the buildings and redecorating all of the villas with more contemporary furnishings, carpeting, etc. The current color scheme is teal, mauve, and cream. It looks like the new colors will be warm golds with black accents, and some other more dramatic colors.

Anyway, we headed to our villa – a two bedroom villa on the ground floor. We entered via the small side, which was nice, and then opened the door to the big side (remember, these can be rented as one unit or two separate units, so there is a locking door between the two sides). It was amazing! It was huge and beautifully decorated, even though, with the exception of the sofa, chair, and dining table it was the “old” style. The kitchen was as big as my kitchen at home with nice GE appliances, including a microwave over the range. The dining room set was gorgeous and enormous, easily accommodating all 6 of us. The living room was spacious, with a sofa bed, coffee table, side chair, TV, DVD/VCR player, stereo system, and gas fireplace. The large master bedroom had a queen-sized bed, and opened onto the master bath, which featured a 2 person jetted bathtub, a separate walk-in, 2 person shower on one side, and enclosed toilet on the other side. The “small side” featured a small living room with a sofa bed, TV with DVD/VCR player, and stereo, a kitchenette with a 2 burner stove, over the range microwave, small bar-sized refrigerator, and eating counter, bathroom with 2 person-jetted tub/shower, and a bedroom with a queen-sized bed and TV. Along the wall between the kitchen/dining room and the bedroom in the large side, there was a built-in buffet with drawers and cabinets, a countertop, and mirrors. Along the back of the large side was a huge patio with patio furniture, a gas barbecue grill that was plumbed into the natural gas, and a gorgeous view of the mountains, the golf course, and the huge homes that lined the fairways. Just outside our villa was a playground for the kids. It is an absolutely gorgeous resort and we had it practically to ourselves!

Shana & Ryan have never stayed in a timeshare, so they were blown away. The kitchen is, of course, fully stocked with pots, pans, dishes, glasses, silverware, cooking utensils, toaster, coffeemaker, and the like. I have to say, this was probably the nicest timeshare we have stayed in yet. Our condo in Vegas is new – only a couple of years old – but the rooms are not as big. Also, it’s Vegas – people are there to be somewhere other than their resort, and it shows. At Fairmont, they have scheduled activities all day long, every day; everything from craft activities for the kids, to walks along the meadows in the snow looking for wildlife, to movies every night. Golf is the focus in Fairmont, and a round of golf only takes so long so there have to be activities to occupy the rest of your time, whereas the Vegas Strip is the focus in Vegas and everything revolves around activities on the strip – free shows, dinners, etc. Very little time is actually spent at the condo in Vegas, with the exception of maybe hanging out at the pool in the morning before heading to the strip for dinner and a show or some gambling. Anyway, the resort in Fairmont was awesome.

We set about unpacking and eating a very light lunch, playing in the snow at the playground for a bit, and then decided to just take in the pool on-site that night, leaving the Hot Springs for the next day. We went to the pool about 5 PM. The kids just loved it. Olivia is like a little fish. She could spend all day in the water. Jonathan was like that when he was little. He just never wanted to get out of the pool. To our amazement, Tyler suddenly knew how to “swim”! Well, he dog paddles, and he does so so ferociously that he tires himself out in no time. We tried to teach him to stroke, which he would do for about 10 seconds before reverting to his dog paddle, but he could make it across the width of the pool, which is something he couldn’t do just a few months earlier. There was an outside hot tub, which we all soaked in while snow fell around us for about half an hour. Finally, about 7:00 we headed to the room to have dinner. We had planned to have frozen lasagna for dinner that night. Unfortunately, we didn’t realize it would take almost two hours to cook. By the time it was ready, the kids were almost falling asleep. It was all they could to keep their eyes open while they were eating. The time in the pool had helped tire them both out. They would sleep well that night. We all got a great night’s sleep. The condos are very quiet!
We got up the next morning, had breakfast, then headed to the Suburban for the 3 minute drive to the hot springs. Uh-oh. The Suburban would not start. The battery was dead. This came as quite a shock because the Suburban is so reliable. After not driving it for almost two months, it started right up the morning we headed to Fairmont. We figured something must have been left on. We found one of the resort workers and asked if he had jumper cables. Well, he did, but they were in his other truck. He checked with several people and all had the same story – their cables were in their other vehicle. Finally, one guy dragged out the crustiest, most decrepit set of jumper cables I have ever seen. As he was bringing them to us, one of the connectors fell off. He went to the maintenance closet and managed to reconnect them somehow. We hooked them up to our battery and the battery of one of the maintenance trucks, waited about 10 minutes, and the Suburban started right up! I have to say this – the guys there at the resort were awesome. They went out of their way to help get us started, spending over half an hour locating cables for us and then making sure we got started. We found out the temperature had dipped to -20 Celsius that night – which translates into -4 Fahrenheit. No wonder the Suburban wouldn’t start! There was hoarfrost on everything. It was a beautiful, sunny, cold day. Surprisingly, it didn’t feel THAT cold. It’s very dry there.

We made it to the hot springs and bought day passes so we could go home for lunch, and come back that evening for another round of soaking. The hot springs are the largest odorless hot springs in Canada. There are 3 pools. One is the hot pool with a temperature of about 100 Fahrenheit. It’s almost the size of an Olympic swimming pool, but only about 4 feet deep at its deepest. Then there is the cool pool – a bit warmer than a normal swimming pool. It is Olympic-sized with a maximum depth of 5 feet. Then there is a diving pool that is normal swimming pool warmth and 10 feet deep with high and low dives. It’s about 1/3 the size of an Olympic pool. A day pass cost us, with a discount for staying at the villas, $8.75 CDN, which is about $7 US, per adult. Olivia was about $5.00 and Tyler was free. The steam rising off the water made it impossible to see more than 4 or 5 feet away until a breeze would come along and blow it clear. The steam droplets would cling to your hair and freeze, making it look like we had white feathers in our hair like a feather boa. It was pretty funny to see these strands of hair sticking up coated with hoarfrost on everyone. When we went back that night, the effect was even more dramatic. I had my hair in a ponytail, and I got tons of comments from other people in the pool about how amazing my hair looked in back with all the frost I had on it. It probably coated my hair in a layer about half an inch thick. We had a blast in the hot springs. We went back and forth between the pools, which was exhilarating. After our morning session, we went back for lunch and a nap – the springs relax you so much you just can’t help but take a nap. We went back about 5:30 PM and stayed until 8:30, then came back for soup before bed. The guys were worried about the Suburban dying again, so at 2 AM Ryan got up and started it and let it run a bit, then at 5 Tom got up and did the same (though he had gotten up at 2 as well). It started every time with no problem, even though it had gotten down to -22C/-8F that night. The staff at the resort stopped by to make sure it had started, which was so thoughtful!

At 9:30 AM on Sunday, we took in the spectacular Sunday buffet at the Fairmont Hot Springs Resort restaurant. It was amazing, with made-to-order omelets, made-to-order pasta dishes, the usual array of eggs benedict, sausages, bacon, salads, fresh fruits, meats, fish, cheeses, breads, pastries, and a dizzying array of desserts, coffee, tea, and any kind of juice you wanted. This feast cost us about $14 US for adults, $8 for Olivia, and Tyler was free again. After breakfast, we packed up the Suburban, checked-out, and returned to Sandpoint, arriving back home in just under 4 hours.

It was a terrific weekend, a great time with the kids, super relaxing, and tough to see come to an end. We have decided that we want to spend next Thanksgiving week up there and rent one additional small side for Tommy and his family, take Jonathan along, of course, and just get away for an entire week together. It should be awesome!