Day 19 - Kelowna Redeems Itself

I had a bit of a downer on Kelowna last night. I'd heard good reports about it prior to our visit out here, but the three-mile journey from the Okanagan Lake Bridge to our hotel had soiled the image for me. So what if there was a model of a lake-monster here? So what if there was a city park? What about all those burger houses and Wendys and Dead Timmy's? What about those miles of car dealerships and warehouses?

Oh, a correction, by the way; it's not "Okanagan" rhymes with "O'Flanagan", it's "Okanagan" pronounced "Oaken-aaaaagen", sorry.

The only thing I really wanted to do was get a photograph of the model Ogopogo for my "big things" collection. Ogopogo is the Okanagan Lake equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster. It's supposedly a big serpent that lives in the lake, and there's a jolly model of it in the city park. With His Majesty refuelled, and my trainee navigatress trembling in the seat next to me, we set off to find it.

Kelowna is a Salish Indian word meaning "grizzly bear". Apple trees were planted here in the mid-1800s, and ever since then fruit has been grown here, hence Kelowna's reputation as the orchard capital of British Columbia. Funnily enough there are no reports of Ogopogo having been seen before the first settlers arrived here in the mid-1800s... after the first crop of cider, perhaps?

Sandra did an excellent job and navigated us back through the three miles of dealerships to City Park, which sits on the edge of Okanagan Lake. And there we had a surprise. It's beautiful. Okay, the sunshine helped, but the view across the lake to the brown and dry hills beyond is impressive. It's set off by the relatively new and brilliantly thought out Waterfront Park a little further along the lakefront, joined to City Park by an expansive marina. A stark white statue, Sails, rises 40 feet into the air and marks the start (or end, depending on your direction of travel) of the marina. The plaque at the bottom of the statue informs that the statue arrived and was lowered into place by helicopter, which must have been a hell of a sight.

Not far from the statue is Ogopogo himself, green and hooped like any good lake monster should be. We waited twenty minutes to get a shot of him clear of children and Japanese tourists, before giving up and walking on to Waterfront Park. What a treat this place is, so new, so clean, with such amazing views over the lake. There's even an outdoor stage built on a small island before a grassy amphitheatre, just right for small concerts or summer plays. It's very pretty and very impressive.

After a slow, leisurely walk, we headed back to Ogopogo, sneaked in between the families and the Asian tourists to get our own photos, then headed back into City Park where we ate sandwiches overlooking the lake and the marvellous piece of architecture and engineering which is the Okanagan Lake Bridge. This is a 4600 foot floating piece of road anchored to the lake bed at strategic points, and the only structure of its type in Canada.

It was almost half past one now, and time to set off for Kamloops. A shortish journey this one, only a couple of hours; along Highway 97C to Merritt and then up Highway 5 to Kamloops (from here you can follow Highway 97 to Prince George, where we stopped en-route on the train this time last week). The landscape, already brown and barren, becomes more so as you get closer to Kamloops. By the time we pulled into the carpark of our hotel, forests were a thing of the past; the hills around this town are parched and difficult for vegetation. The blast of heat that hit us when we stepped out of the air-conditioned interior of HM was like anything we've experienced in the Mediterranean.

We're here for two nights, and following almost of week of one night stands, I'd booked us into somewhere with a little luxury; a King Size bed (in case we argue), and a bath with a built-in jacuzzi (a picture of Sandra's face just now when the whirlpool action started would have been priceless, but also banned from the Flickr site). The helpful girl on reception gave us a map and directions to Riverside Park on the south-side of the Thompson River which flows through downtown Kamloops. I should have known better; directions supplied by a woman, and navigation by another woman. Instead of Riverside Park on the south-side, we ended up, vexed and tense, on McArthur Island Park on the north-side. Still, there we stumbled upon a colony of yellow-bellied marmots, and watched two bald-headed eagles gliding lazily across the river, and everything was well again.

Dinner tonight was at a brilliant Italian restaurant across the carpark from our hotel. Our waitress, a bustling and busy woman called Penny, gave us even more directions to Riverside Park, aided by her fellow waitresses ("Is Riverside Park on First or Second Avenue?" "Third!"). Tomorrow will be an interesting day.