Oct 20-21

We left Kelowna after 4 nights on Monday. The beauty and climate of the entire Okanagan area certainly explains why it is a popular area to move to, although the price of housing is somewhat comparable to back home, however there are less expensive areas if you seek them out. One final comment from the area is the smarts to dress up their hydro and other utility boxes with various pictures (see att.) vs. looking at drab gray or green boxes. A great idea.

Anyway, we headed off to Penticton this morning via West Kelowna, Peachland, and Summerland with a few winery stops on the way. The first couple we went to, Quails Gate and Mission Hill certainly exude a wealth level many time more than others we have seen. There IS money in making wine! One final stop we made was in Summerland at Dirty Laundry winery. The name was inspired after a brothel that was in the area back in the early 1900’s. It’s a quirky and sassy winery where the name of the wines and designs on the bottles were unique. (ie: Dangerous Liaison and Naught Chardonnay)

It was an overcast day with some sun that later turned into rain. I think BC is warming us up to “coastal weather”! We decided to experience a night at Camp Wally. Boon docking at Walmart with other RV’rs was a bit of an eye opener. There were several older (25 yr plus) van campers and some larger Class C and the original class A’s – again, these were likely 25 + years old. For those that know the show Breaking Bad, the RV on that show would have looked pretty good beside these ones. Throughout the trip, we have come to the realization that there are many transient workers moving from town to town finding work and living from these older units. A few of them had a pickup truck with them as well. In BC especially, RV’ing seems to be very popular and we are amazed at how many trailers, 5^th wheels and motor homes you see parked in people’s drives and storage areas. So we parked there early in the evening then walked about 1.5 km to a Boston Pizza for dinner. Although the original started in Penticton by the Jim Treliving on Dragon’s Den, it has been remodeled like the other ones in the chain.

Back to Camp Wally and with the assistance of a powered wi-fi antenna we have and Walmart providing free wi-fi, we were able to stream and watch a couple of TV shows prior to turning in for the night.

Today, we headed towards Hope BC and drove through a region of 250 km’s of varying climates from almost desert to deeply wooded forests as you can see in the one picture that has our RV in it. The roads were very windy as we traversed up and down through the Cascade Mountains. They were scenic, quiet roads as it is sparsely populated throughout the region passing through Princeton (pop ~ 3,000) and Hedley (yes the current music band named themselves after it). Arrived in Sunshine Valley, which also has an RV resort named after it for a quiet afternoon and swim and hot tub (both indoors) at this almost new resort. It’s part of a chain.

We may be “off the perch” for a few days as we are visiting friends in Harrison Hot Springs. Squawk soon!

A good idea to decorate utility boxes

There’s money to be made as a wine maker.

Ditto – even more impressive than Quails Gate

Mission Hill

Mission Hill

Mission Hill

Finally ……

Too much $$$

A 500 year old fountain moved from Austria – Mission Hill

I kept my distance!!!

Arid area of the Cascade Mtns.

Our camp – not busy this time of year

Space restrictions – Jazz’s dining quarters

Oct 18

A few days earlier, I was on Trip Advisor, which is a great travelling tool to find out about an area. Looking up the Kelowna/Okanagan Valley area, I was checking out the top attractions in the area. Number one attraction was the Myra Canyon Trestles. It sounded intriguing. A trail for cyclists and hikers comprising 18 trestles and 2 tunnels over a 12 km one way old rail bed. It was once owned by the Kettle Valley Railway and opened in the early 1900’s as a means of transporting ore and copper from the mines in the north. In 2003 there was a large wild fire that destroyed several of the trestles so the trail was closed until 2008 to rebuild. Anyway, enough history.

It took us about ½ hour to get to the “entrance road”, which was an 8 km gravel washboard in some spots. After another 20 minutes, we pulled the bikes off the rack and away we went. It was a bit cooler at that elevation, but smelling the fresh air and Douglas Fir and other evergreens, made it all worth it.

Kathy was a little leery biking over the trestles, but soon mastered it and started enjoying herself. After a 2 hour round trip (20 km) – we had crossed all 18 trestles (twice), we returned to the RV to a tail wagging Jazz and had lunch. It was an amazing bike ride with only a 2 deg grade on the way back.

We returned back to our camp for a little work to be done. Washing an RV takes a little longer than your car, but after 3 weeks, it needed it. Once finished it was time for R & R and some wild BC sockeye salmon for dinner. Tomorrow is another day of chores heading south to the Penticton area for the night on Monday.

We’ll squawk to you tomorrow!

Look Mom – one hand

Yes, Kathy is in the picture (like where’s Waldo)

There’s the RV on the other side of the canyon

One of the rebuilt trestles

Looking down at Okanagan Lake

Oct 15-17

First and foremost, we have learned to like being tourists in the “off-season” and especially during a work day when very few other tourists are around.

We left Salmon Arm after doing nothing touristy for a day. Tourists need days off too, to do laundry, pay bills and just laze around doing very little. We had one of those days. The on board generator we have, has failed to start during the trip so far, but fortunately, there hasn’t been to many times when we really needed it. For those that don’t know, the generator is basically needed for “dry camping” (ie: no electrical supply). It can be used to charge the “house” batteries and also has a power inverter in it so you can plug in and run normal household appliances. We found out early on when stopping for lunch and w/o the generator that you can’t use the microwave or toaster, etc. Anyway, after a few calls we found a place in Vernon BC, which is just south of Salmon Arm that could look at it. We arrived there on Thursday at 9:30 and by 10 am Bernie, their tech, had tweaked and tuned it, and it started with a purr! It was music to our ears. Now we can boon dock where every we want! Onward to Kelowna and the Okanagan Valley. (the West coast fruit basket)

As we approached Kelowna area, a sign caught our interest saying scenic route, so off 97b we went to a little village called Oyama and a tourist kiosk. After buying a bag of local apples and looking at some brochures, we headed down the round into Lake Country region, we started on the Scenic Sip wine tour – hey it was 2 pm back home! Again of the 6 wineries we went to, most of them just had us at the sipping bar. Since I was driving, I sipped a little less. These wineries where all relatively new( less than 10 years) with a few opening up their wine tasting showrooms as early as last weekend(Arrowleaf). One winery Ex Nihilo, which translates to “something out of nothing” has an affiliation with a world-renown portrait artist, Igor Babailov. Google him and you’ll see that he has done paintings for many famous people. The whole story and connection is much longer, but they have a picture there sketched by Igor and he has visited the winery couple of times. These 6 wineries are in a fairly small region and are up some steep hills. Although the RV is over 31’ long, we found ourselves in some small parking lots that day, and maneuvered, backed up, etc. like we have been doing it for years. I doubt we’ll become a long haul trucker couple though.

We arrived at our site for 4 nights at Scenic View RV Park about 5 km’s from downtown Kelowna late afternoon. It was 19 deg C and nice to see the fall colours have returned.

The Kelowna area has a great climate year round with warm spring to fall weather and reasonable winters with daily averages of 1 deg. For the golfers, your season is 9 months – not bad! The Okanagan region and south to almost the US border has about 140 wineries and an abundance of fruit and vegetable producers much like Niagara. There is evidence of lots of money in this region, looking at some of the homes. We went downtown yesterday to explore the waterfront and have lunch. The city of Kelowna (population 120,000) needs to be commended on what they have accomplished with their waterfront. One word – IMPRESSIVE.

They have developed a small inner waterway, were small craft in a controlled fashion can come into. Everything is very clean and well laid out. They even blend their utility boxes by painting flowers or greenery on them. We had a great time walking around (on a work day) with very few other tourists around. A bit of rain earlier in the morning before we arrived, had stopped but left the sky overcast, so the colours aren’t jumping out like I would have liked.

We stocked up on groceries and back “home” late afternoon.

Enjoy your weekend

Fruit Stand – Oyama

1st “Sip”

Ex Nihilo  Winery – means “Out of Nothing” – painting by Igor Babailov

From Arrowleaf show room

Gray Monk – a long established BC winery

Me at Ancient Hills

Beach – Downtown Kelowna

Jazz needs a drink – as usual

Part of the small waterway for small craft (controlled)

Band shell

Tugboat beach

Deja Vue – Fall colours – back to the painter’s palette

Arrowleaf Winery – Building just opened on Thanksgiving wkd.

Oct  14

We began the day with Kathy reading some older blogs about the drive through the Rockies that would take us into BC today. She said, “was that supposed to provide me with a good outlook for the day”? After she drove the majority of the way today including the Kicking Horse and Roger’s Pass areas with the RV, she said “that was no big deal; I don’t know what that blogger was so paranoid about”.

Today began with light drizzle, which is the first we have seen in several days and for the first couple of hours low lying clouds were all around and below us. The sun wasn’t out until later in morning offering a different viewpoint of the Rockies.

The tour through the Rockies showed much higher and snow capped mountains than we saw back in the Banff area. Today’s drive was about 330 kms but it was a slower drive both with a few extra scenic stops and the slower speeds climbing the mountains highways.

Some of the highlights for today were Kicking Horse Pass, Roger’s Pass, the spiral tunnels, and the Natural Bridge. You could easily spend a few days in this stretch with better weather as there are many camp grounds, hiking trails and historic things to see. The Spiral tunnels date back 100 years CP Rail bore a spiral tunnel 1 km in length through the Kicking Horse Pass area (Mt. Ogden) so trains could pass through the area vs. using a previous track that went down a much steeper sloped passage way. Think of it – a “spiral tunnel”. http://www.bctravel.com/se/field.html

The Natural Bridge was quite something to see with the water over many years forming this bridge and the section under the bridge continues to widen with the force of water. Just Kathy and I and 2 other people were there luckily before 2 busloads of tourists pulled in as we were leaving. Going through Roger’s pass area, there were several avalanche tunnels as this area is one of the most treacherous areas in the world during the winter for avalanches. They actually control them as best they can by actually firing artillery to actually cause a “controlled” avalanche.

We arrived in Salmon Arm, BC which is situated on Shuswap Lake around 2 pm for a couple of nights of down time. We found a nice small campground with lots of Wi-Fi band width to get caught up on paying bills, blog, emails, news, etc. since we haven’t had wi-fi access for basically a week.

That’s the “poop” for today!

Heading West from Lake Louise – More majestic Rockies ahead!

The Spirall tunnels

Elk laying in a dry river bed

Natural Bridge area

The “Natural Bridge”

Natural Bridge area

A section of Kicking Horse Pass

More Kicking Horse Pass

Driving through and around clods

Going thru Roger’s Pass

Avalanche tunnel – Roger’s Pass

Roger’s Pass Interpretive Ctr. – Mtn. Goats (taxidermy)

Shuswap Lake-Salmon Arm

Oct 11-13

Saturday and Sunday were cooler days, but still had full sunshine all day. The temps where in the lower teens. Saturday was more “normal”, less touristy day at least for the morning, as we had to comb Jazz. In the afternoon we went to the Banff Upper Hot Springs and bathed in 40 deg water with about 125 other people. Relaxed in there for about 40 minutes then back to camp. Sometimes there was a waiting period for the buses, so if we were in downtown, we would pop into one of the merchandise shops.

Changed, had a quick beer and then grabbed the bus back to town for a night out on the town. From St. James Irish pub then over to a family steakhouse, dating back to the 1930’s era in a large old log building. It was called Melissa MisSteak, so we had to go of course (right Mel?).

Back to the RV for an early night.

Sunday, October 12^th – up fairly early and we headed off to a laundry mat we found that was an easy 10 minutes walk away. We haven’t found the travelling RV laundry fairy yet, but we’re still looking. Went back home late morning for breakfast, then to town to find a place to skype the families Thanksgiving get together. Found a great pub with a quiet back room at the Elk and Oarsman. Spoke to and saw the family, had lunch (Pizza – with elk meat, caramelized onions, roasted peppers) – Mmmmm!!!

Got back to camp for a late afternoon campfire, and BBQ’d lamb and Kathy’s special potatoes. (you know which ones….) After dinner we spent a couple of hours at the neighbors campfire having enjoyable conversation and Jazz was able to hang out with her new friend – Soupy Sales a 7 year old Ole English Sheep Dog.

Monday we had a late morning sleep in, then packed up and headed to Lake Louise Camp ground about 55 kms north arriving around 2 pm. Had a lazy afternoon including a campfire and a couple of games of scrabble amongst the pines! Very peaceful!!

Turkey medallions and roast potatoes for our Thanksgiving dinner.

Off to BC tomorrow.

See you on the other side of the Rockies!

Our first glacier we saw – on the way to the Columbia Ice fields on Friday

Waterfowl Lake

Athabasca Glacier – Columbia Icefields

Saskatchewan Glacier

Peyto Lake – Bow Valley Summit – 7,000′

A caption for the ladies at CPC – the hat made the trip

Lake Louise-amazingly beautiful

Jazz getting a “cold” drink at Morraine Lake

Morraine Lake

Campfire at our Banff site

Jazz and her new friend-Soupy Sales – an Old English Sheepdog