Osoyoos, Kettle River and Canada's Only Desert
NOTE: Before we talk about where we were last week, we wanted to let everyone know that we are paying close attention to the fires. We are currently in an area that people are being evacuated to, and we are happy to have had rain for the last two days. We are staying safe. Reading about what happened in Jasper, and talking to some of the evacuees staying here in the campground, has definitely put things in perspective.
From Fernie, it was a day’s drive west to Kettle River RV Park. This RV Park is east of Osoyoos and is in the Okanagan Desert/Nk’mip Desert, the only desert in Canada.
It was very hot while we were there 40C/105F, so we were thankful for our air conditioning. In the nearby town of Midway (population 650) there was a disc golf course up in the hills.
It was a fun course, but wow, it was HOT playing there. Midway also had a really interesting museum that we had to visit.
We also visited the nearby “city” of Greenwood(population 665) “the smallest incorporated city in Canada.” It was a fascinating little town, and had a museum that we had to visit. I learned about the “Horizontal Loop Electro Magnetometer”. I mean, who wouldn’t want to run around with a friend while both wearing one of these:
This next photo doesn’t look like much, but it’s layers of plexiglass in a case and on the pieces of plexiglass are lines indicating the path through a local mine. The yellow bits are showing where copper was found and the layers are indicating the relative depth of the paths and copper deposits. It was pretty fascinating.
There was a pamphlet they gave out at the museum that is a walking tour of the town and tells you about the history of all the buildings, including the building that now houses the Legion. When the smelter was closed this former furniture store (and funeral parlour) was abandoned and in 1942 it became “Building No. 3” and housed interred Japanese Canadians.
After the years of internment ended the city began turning it into a community center.
While driving into Greenwood, we couldn’t help but see the Greenwood Stack of the abandoned copper smelter on the hill outside of the city, so we had to go for a walk and see it up close.
While the smelter building is in ruins, the stack itself remarkably intact.
We also did the longer drive (50mins) into Osoyoos. Osoyoos is the southern most town in the Okanagan Valley, and Lake Osoyoos is partly in Canada and partly in the United States. It’s a resort town, known for it’s beach and is surrounded by vineyards and mountains. In the 1960s there was a boom in the tourist industry and with it, a series of motels were built, as we learned from a sign in this fabulous display in a downtown clothing store.
Many of the motels, and their signs, are still there.
But, we were really there for the wine. We did a wine tasting at Burrowing Owl, then went for lunch at Nk’Mip at one of their restaurants The Bear, the fish, the root and the berry.
The complex at Nk’Mip was quite impressive. There are multiple restaurants, accommodations and a cultural center that we visited. The next day we drove back and did a tasting at Black Hills Estate. As much as we love the Burrowing Owl Pinot Noir, we preferred the atmosphere and the tasting experience in the beautiful building at Black Hills. Our sommelier explained that the building used to be the house of the owner. For a bunch of reasons they had to move the tastings out of their production facility, so they renovated the house and now use it instead.
In Osoyoos, there was also a museum which, of course, we had to visit. I was excited to see that they had a linotype machine.
We first saw one of these in the MICG (Musée de l'Imprimerie et de la Communication Graphique) in Lyon. We were fascinated to learn how these machines work and the fact that this machine would cast a line of type from molten metal… all inside this machine…. pretty amazing.
As you can imagine from its name, the Kettle River, ran right behind the Kettle River RV Park where we were staying. From our walks, we quickly discovered that floating down the river, in the floaty of your choice, was a thing that needed to be done. So, after buying an inflatable boat at the Hardware Store in Osoyoos, we went to the office to ask the manager of the trailer park a bunch of questions about how one gets back to the trailer park after floating away from it. In the office, someone else (Cindy) happened to be there, chatting with the manager, and before we knew it, she was in the truck with us. She directed us to where we needed to go into the river (upriver from the campground), and then she drove our truck back to the campground for us. I mean, how can you not trust someone who is on the third consecutive gold medal winning masters curling team with your truck even though you had only known them for 5 minutes.
We put our boat into the water at the Prospector Pub in Rock Creek, and floated for almost two hours back to our campground. It was lovely and we saw a deer, an eagle and many ducks along the way.
While on our wanderings, we saw signs in various places for animals that we were quite happy not to have seen:
Some of the places we frequented in the area: Rock Creek Trading Post (they roast their own coffee on their covered patio); Copper Eagle Cappuccino and Bakery (for coffee in Greenwood); Sara’s Curio Emporium in Rock Creek for fresh haskaps and a bottle of haskap juice; Junction 3 (lovely coffee place in Osoyoos with only outdoor seating and usually a line-up); Gino’s Coffee House (also in Osoyoos for coffee and breakfast sandwiches with a lovely back patio).
It was quite a stay in a beautiful area of B.C., from here, we headed north to Kamloops.