Canada, that is—where the colour grey is spelt the English way. Especially in British Columbia. 

In the week following Memorial Day, The Mate and I had a nice free chunk of days between various commitments and appointments. Perfect timing to introduce Vanna to our favorite portion of North America…starting with a quick visit to the auto glass shop to fix her poor rear window.

Heading for the eastern portion of the province, we crossed Washington’s Cascades and spent our first night in Twisp, right next to the Methow River.

Thanks to the window glass, it was late afternoon when we arrived, but also so windy we were just as happy to skip the bike ride we’d normally look forward to there.

Crossing the border into Osoyoos, the gazillion not-yet-open fruit stands made us regret being there so early in the season. On the other hand, given the fires of recent summers, we felt just as happy to experience lush greenery and cooler temps around Penticton, a region we’d had to skip last fall due to…see the opening words of this sentence.

We were happy to finally poke around Penticton, given its reputation as a bike-trail nexus.

The Kettle Valley River Trail goes right around Okanagan Lake, through town, and up the other shore…

…with fun add-ons like this trestle, traveling through vineyards…

…and this raven, guarding its throne:

Oh, and speaking of guarding: I also met this guy along the path:

Can I just say, Okanagan Lake is RIDICULOUS? 84 miles long (135 km), 2.5 – 3.1 miles wide (4-5 km)…it just goes and goes and goes. [thanks, Wikipedia]

Midway up this endless, snaky lake is the town–city?–of Kelowna. It was very close to Ground Zero in last year’s fire, so we were glad to see it seemed to have survived…but we found it too big and trafficky for the vibe we were in. After riding a short piece of rail-trail, we got out of town. (Might go back in a non-Vanna-sized car someday; tons more trail there.)

[Not pictured: Kelowna traffic jam. But also not pictured, to be fair, the 3-foot long gopher snake we met on the bike path.]

One ridge over from Okanagan, though, is a lake we fell in love with last fall: Kalamalka. Also ringed by a bike path…but right along the shore, zero roads involved.

Tiny in comparison to the endless Okanagan, Kalamalka is twice as deep (over 400 feet in places) and famously color-changing (colour-changing) thanks to molecules from limestone deposits which are temperature-sensitive. I learned all this from a kiosk I had ridden past last year…but I was still more fascinated by the scenery along the ride.

The water’s so clear I even found myself taking pictures of fish.

But, just as last year, I found myself focused on the parkland across the water, which includes no campgrounds–day use only.

Instead, we spent the night in Dutch’s Campground, a funky old place at the head of the lake. Not a park–but for campering, just our speed.

Next morning broke drizzly but warm, and I was thrilled to finally experience the land across the lake I’d been staring at: Kalamalka Lake Provincial Park.

SO satisfying to finally get in there and hike all through its uppy-downy trails.

From Kalamalka P.P. we turned right and headed straight east, reversing our route from last fall. Truth be told, any road driven in Vanna vs. our Toyota feels like a completely different road. (As in, “Who put all these curves and steep downgrades in here?!”)

But we also stopped in places we skipped past last year. Like the town of Nakusp (na-CUSP).

Travel Tip: wherever you go in Canada, look for the Information Centres. Even the smallest towns have them, and we’ve always found them to be staffed by the FRIENDLIEST, most helpful folks. Which might be redundant when describing Canadians.

At the RV campground in Nakusp, it wasn’t only the people who were friendly.

[not pictured: Gretchen cleaning the floormats next morning from what we’d tracked in. Turns out camping around free-range chickens isn’t the best idea.]

Now in the Slocan River Valley, where we’d spent two nights last year, we treated ourselves to an easy walk along the rail-trail, digging the peace.

At the end of this day, we decided to treat ourselves to a night in a hotel, with restaurant food and everything. But I’ll catch up about that in my next installment, OK? Right now I’m going to leave you with these peaceful flowers (…and extra credit if you can name them for me, because Google apparently can’t).