It is starting to get cold. And it is time to head South and head down, both of which should make it warmer.
We took the fast road over to Kelowna, stopping just short to visit the tourist information center. Here we got some excellent local information on what to do. Based on what we heard, we thought that we would spend about 5 days in the Okanagan Valley. Ultimately, it was more like 3 days.
First stop was Kelowna West, where we failed to find a coffee shop or any nice waterfront parks. More of an industrial and agricultural zone. Okanagan Lake is very beautiful. We ended up staying in the Okanagan Lake Provincial Park. On the way to the park we stopped at Hardy Falls to see the Salmon swimming upstream, which was cool.
The next day we headed into Kelowna proper, and had a chance to enjoy a little bit of city life and have a restaurant lunch, of sushi. We walked around before the afternoon rain and stocked up. For the first time on this trip, we had a little bit of trouble finding somewhere to stay. Turns out, there are no many campgrounds in town, and the ones there are, don’t seem to be very nice. After 15 minutes of surfing the web, it finally dawned on us, we should just head into the forest and find a dispersed camp. Which we did, and found a really good spot right next to the Kettle Valley trailhead, where we palnned to go for a walk the next day. So, that worked out pretty well.
The weather was meant to be sunny and nice, and it turned out to be overcast with spots of light drizzle. This would not deter us and our walk. The Kettle Valley is a walk along a now disused railway line with some amazing trestles bridging the canyons as the railway line winds through the mountains. After the walk we continued our journey South to Browne Lake, where we stayed a few days. It continues to get colder.
We wanted to see Summerland, and decided to take the fast road to get there, so we ended up going back through Kelwona. Summerland was nice, and we did a drive-by tour. The lake continued to impress us as we drove South. We went to our first laundromat, ever. With the washing done, we headed a little more South to Okanagan Falls, and the delightful Provincial Park. In fact we liked it so much, we stayed for two days. And spent a day walking around Okanagan Falls and just relaxing.
We planned for a few more days in British Columbia, but we got some very sad news and we needed to go to Belgium urgently, so we drove to Seattle, which was 7 hours away. Arriving late at our friends house just before dark. The trip is over, and what a great trip we had. The next day we we flew out to Belgium to prepare for the funeral.
