Day 20 - Kamloops

In 1862 a group of approximately one hundred and forty people (all men except for one pregnant woman) set off from Fort Garry (now Winnipeg, Manitoba), and headed west across the vast Canadian prairies and the Rocky Mountains in search of gold. The group split several times, and a number of men died on the journey, usually from drowning or hypothermia. After seven months of travel one of the groups, the pregnant woman and her husband included, arrived at the confluence of two rivers, the north and south Thompson Rivers, where a small Fort called Kamloops had been set up a few years before. The day after their arrival the woman, Catherine Schubert, gave birth to a daughter, Rose. The influx of this group of settlers, known as the Overlanders, helped establish the town of Kamloops, and Schubert Drive on the north bank of the river is named in honour of Catherine, her husband Alexander, and their family.

The name Kamloops comes from a Sushwap Indian word meaning "meeting of the waters", and you can see the two rivers coming together from the south bank at Riverside Park - which, as discussed at our Italian restaurant last night, is easily accessible down Third Avenue, with a free car park and everything. We drove within an ace of it yesterday afternoon on several occasions it seems, and even stopped to check the map a stone's throw from the main entrance at one point. How we laughed when we realised.

As we ate breakfast this morning we could see that the day was shaping up to be a scorcher, so the morning was destined to be a trip to Riverside Park, assuming we could find it. As it turned out - despite there being a First Avenue and a Third Avenue but no Second Avenue - we got there without much fuss, and walked along the river front, watching a few people cycling or sunbathing or even, in the case of one man, fishing right at the confluence of the two rivers which gives this town its name.

Having walked from one end of the park to the other, we then looped up into the town itself, and took in some of the shops as well as some of the community action stalls that were set up in one part of the road. We stopped at a sandwich shop and bought a beef (and cheese!) sandwich for me, and a salad and pitta bread for Sandra, all freshly made, for our lunch which we intended to eat in the park. We found a picnic table in the sun, spread out our maps and considered the journey we've undertaken so far, with the little bit to complete from Kamloops to Vancouver tomorrow, and pondered what to do that afternoon. But... yanno what? It was warm, it was sunny, it was peaceful. Our options included travelling to Sun Peaks Resort where there is a lake and views, or to Paul Lake Provincial Park where there is a lake and views. Or we could stay in Kamloops Riverside Park where there was a river instead of a lake, and some views.

So we stayed put. We've done enough driving.

We found a bench in the sun and read our books. Occasionally I would get bored or too hot and go for a wander around. On one of these wanders I got talking to a lady who was some sort of park warden. She was using a litter-picker to pick up bottles and cans, and as she worked (not that there were many bottles and cans around) she told me about how the river would flood, sometimes not much if the temperature rose gently and melted the winter snow slowly, sometimes alarmingly fast if the temperature rose sharply or the rains came. She pointed across the river to the north bank, telling me how much it had changed since she'd lived there in 1948 as a girl of two years old, and she discussed the silt and sand and the water table problems with me as I tried to work out her age. Sixty-four? This lithe and agile, sun-bronzed woman with a long pony-tail threaded through the back of her baseball cap was sixty-four? Good grief, count me in on the Kamloops lifestyle.

Another time I walked back across the park, past the sunbathing beautiful people (Kamloops has a lot of beautiful people), to a corner shop to get us some drinks. An LED display near the shop announced that the temperature was 32 degrees, and it felt like it too. A gasping, dry wind was blowing in the unshielded areas of the park; it was easy to see how this area gets the reputation as the desert region of British Columbia.

At 4pm it was starting to get hazy, and I wanted to get back to the hotel before the rush hour started and made driving difficult again. We headed back, parked up, and walked over to the Visitor Information centre to take a picture of the fifteen foot long wooden trout outside, probably the last "big thing" we'll photograph this holiday.

We went back to the hotel room and chilled for a bit, then ate in the same pleasant Italian restaurant as last night. It was just as good.

Tomorrow we've got a longish drive down to Vancouver, but we intend to set off early enough to give us a chance to revisit those places that we only saw in the rain three weeks ago.

That'll be holiday-early then...