Sunday June 28, 2015

Another hot day of riding in beautiful British Columbia. When we left the campsite at 7:15 am the temperature was already 25 degrees! There is a short 8% hill leaving Keremeos, where you get a great view of the Town.

We had a great tail-wind pushing us along as we left Keremeos.

We cycled through the Okanagan Highlands and Valley which has a number of vineyards and is a good farming area.

One Vineyard was called Twisted Hills, and was in the area of this hill range.

We also saw a lot of ‘protest’ signs not wanting a National Park. My first response was why would you not want to protect an area for future generations. I googled National Parks and this is what I found.

“National parks are protected under the federal Canada National Parks Act from all forms of industrial development including mining, forestry, oil and natural gas exploration and development, and hydro-electric development, as well as commercially extractive activities such as sport hunting. The emphasis is on providing activities consistent with the protection of park resources while providing exceptional visitor opportunities”.

The Okanagan Valley and Okanagan Highlands are a large tourist area, which brings thousands of people to this area for wine tours etc. If this area was to become a National Park I wonder how it would effect the development of the area. Obviously these people are concerned.

We saw three separate forest fires today, this one in the hills surrounding Eagle Valley. Last night there was a thunder storm in Keremeos and Osoyoos, that is what probably ignited the tinder dry area.

Ralf and I love to look at old farm buildings, the building materials used and the character of them depicts the hardship that early settlers had to go through. We really liked the look of this run-down old building and wondered how much it would take to renovate it.

We often think of these things as we have cycled along around the world. Could we live here? What would we do to earn a living? Could we create our own Peddlers Rest? – like the one we stayed at in New Zealand. Although we are still a long way from finishing these questions are coming up more often than I want to think about right now. One side of me wants to carry on cycling and not settle down until we have to, the other side of me is ready to stop cycling and settle into a ‘normal’ life again, but not sure that I will be able to settle down.  For Ralf, normal is mundane – he wants to carry on.  Even though he doesn\’t like camping 100% of the time.

The hills for the most part were manageable although there was one long one – 7 kms of a 6% to 7% grade. There was no shade and it was stinking hot. Ralf stopped a couple of times to take photos, I kept pedaling on. We got to the top and there was an outcropping of rock where we stopped for a break and some shade.

There was an historic sign depicting information on Spotted Lake, we are not quite sure why the sign was located where it was, as Spotted Lake was down the hill about 2 kms away from the sign.

The lake is something I have never seen before. Apparently, the lake has been used historically by the local Indian Band for healing purposes, it is considered to be one of the most highly mineralized inland lakes in the world. The minerals evaporate in the summer and crystalize forming white-ringed circles. The minerals consist of Epsom salts, calcium, sodium sulphates and trace minerals such as silver and titanium.

We had a lovely downhill coming into Osoyoos, and it was incredibly hot by the time we arrived at the Tim Hortons.

Osoyoos Lake is a big tourist destination and has a variety of motels, hotels and campsites available. We had found one on-line last night and reserved a camp-site for tonight.

We had an early lunch and headed to the grocery store and campsite. I waited outside the grocery store and chatted to a lovely older couple, who told me we were amazing and that we were right to live life now, you never know what might happen. Another woman told me we were inspirational. I was a hot sweaty mess, but felt really good about what we are doing.

While Ralf was in the store, I was watching three water bombers (airplanes), flying around picking up water and releasing it over the fire that was burning on the mountain just outside of the Town.

We carried on to the campsite, by which time the temperature had soared to 43 degrees. The campsite was a motel and campsite, we opted for a motel room, with air-conditioning, the temperature in the sun was 47 degrees.

This robin was trying to keep cool under the roof of the office building.

After we had settled into the room, I went over to pay. I noticed the owner had a beer and asked if we could buy a couple from him. Of course, he is not allowed to sell beer and had pop, water etc. for sale. He gave us two beers – bonus.

An afternoon of vegging out, watching a movie, in a relatively cool room – bliss.