June 27, 2012
Finally, after four days, we have lived through a day
without rain. I suppose since there is still 2 hours to go before bedtime this
may not be true. The wisp of a cloud sitting above the hill in front of me
could defy science, float over to right above our tent and drop itself upon our
heads here at the picnic table; but I remain optimistic. We are at Kekuli Bay
campground, just south of Vernon and it is beautiful. Nestled between the
highway above us and Kalamalka Lake below us we are in a wide open, grassy, and
quiet campground on a slowly sloping grass hill. This is by far and away the
most comfortable we have been camping so far. We are not quite sure what
combination of a sunny day, a nice campground, and a refreshed mind have made
it this, but we are very happy here. We have few neighbours and so Zaid has a
lot of freedom to travel, and the lack of trees allows us to spot him from
afar, giving him a wider leash. He has particularly enjoyed playing at the
campground playground, having been twice already.
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| Haifa and Owen on the bluff overlooking Kalamalka Lake. Photo: Ben McNamee |
Getting here has been quite the adventure. Yesterday morning
we woke up bright and early at our campground in Osoyoos so that we could get
to the hotel in Kelowna by 12 for an important phone call at 1 PM. We had made
our stop at Tim Hortons and were heading up the Okanagan with 20 pack of
Timbits and 2 medium coffees in hand (Many thanks go to Natasha Krotez for the
gift card, it has come in very handy so far). Somewhere around Oliver we were
driving about 90 Km per hour behind an older van. There was an Orchard on one
side and a Vineyard on the other. All of a sudden, a deer jumps out onto the
shoulder of the highway about 20m in front of the van. Spooked by the sudden
appearance of cars coming in its direction, the deer decides to jump into
oncoming traffic. Realizing its mistake it tries to make a course correction
and jumps diagonally forward and further across the highway. The driver of the
van acted perfectly, slowing the car as much as they could safely and swerving
to the right in an attempt to avoid a collision. Alas, no such luck for the
Deer or the Van. The left front corner of the van smacks into the bag leg of
the deer, spinning the poor guy around before he somehow scampers across to the
other side. While he was lucky to get away, I suspect that it will be bear food
in short time as I can’t imagine it operating at full speed. The van pulls over
to the shoulder and we see that the front left headlamp has been all smashed
up. If the coffee hadn’t woken us up by this point, we were surely awake now.
This morning we had a nice visit with an old friend from
graduate school, Ross. He is a professor at UBC-Okanagan now and has a two
month old daughter. He and his wife were very gracious hosts, who were kind
enough to allow us to do laundry at their place while we had coffee and
visited. It was a very nice morning and a big thank you must go out to him and
his wife.
Haifa has a desire to tour a winery and so tomorrow I think
we will. There is little around Vernon, so we will likely head backwards partially
towards Kelowna to visit Gray Monk estates just south of Oyama. Another night
in the Okanagan is warranted before we head out towards the Kootenays and the
Nakusp area. Hopefully our extended stay in this valley will be enough for the
rains to have passed us by and the floods to have subsided before Friday.
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