My south-of-60 adventure
I was not going to ask anyone to drive me to the Whitehorse airport at 3:45 a.m. on a Tuesday. It would have been cruel. That night, I had everything ready and packed to spend the summer in the B.C. Kootenays, my first summer south of 60 in a very long time.
Instead, I had a lively chat with a taxi driver about local airlines competition, while watching his speedometer going too fast in a 70 km/h zone. We sure made it on time to the airport so I could catch the 5:30 a.m. flight to Vancouver and then Kelowna.
After boarding in Whitehorse, the plane arrived in Vancouver around 7:45 a.m. My next flight to Kelowna was at 9:30 a.m. I walked the terminal end to end, to kill time and stretch my legs. Closer to the boarding time, I took a seat in the waiting lounge by my gate. By that time, the lack of sleep started to hit me, but I was brought back to life presto when a very courageous mouse emerged in the daylight. From its hiding spot below a boarding counter, it ran like its life was on the line (it probably was), reaching the safety of a garbage container about three metres away. A few others saw the mouse, like I did, including three mesmerized boarding agents. They were unsure what to do (Treat it as an unregistered guest or a pest?). I knew what I was going to do: grab my bags and move.
Kelowna was hot and sunny. After reuniting with my boyfriend, Mark, who picked me up from the airport, we decided to hang out for a bit in the city before starting the long drive home to his place in the Kootenays. We parked the car one kilometre from Okanagan Lake and walked to its shore. Sitting on a bench right by the water, we shared bad jokes about Ogopogo and unlucky boaters. It was delicious.
On the walk back to the car, we passed the Francophone Cultural Centre of the Okanagan (Le Centre culturel francophone de l’Okanagan) where we learned, from their outdoor display, that Kelowna means grizzly bear in the local Okanagan language. It remains a rare sight but the bears can still be found in the region, despite a loss of habitat.
We left Kelowna and stopped for a sandwich break at Peachland, still on the shore of Okanagan Lake. We once again found benches by the water to sit on. “Are there still peaches in Peachland?” I asked Mark, who knows the region better than I do.
“Yes, but there are probably more vacation condos than peach orchards these days.”
“Well, there are no more white horses in Whitehorse,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s true,” he replied (to which we debated whether a place name should remain the same even after its namesake is “no longer”).
Osoyoos was the next stop after Peachland. This was our last break in the Okanagan Valley, before the ascent to the Kootenays on Highway 3. We had another sandwich break for me, and a coffee break for Mark, who was doing all the driving. We walked on the shore of another large lake, Osoyoos Lake, in which people were happily swimming to cool down. By that time, the temperature had reached 31.5 degrees Celsius.
Coffee and sandwich done, we once again climbed into the car and drove east towards the Kootenays. We entered lush farmlands in the mountain valleys. “This is the greenest you’ll see this place,” said Mark. “By the end of June, the rain will stop and everything will turn yellow.” Green it was at the moment.
Grand Forks is where we made our final stop, filling the fuel tank at a local gas station. No coffee or sandwiches. It was 7 p.m. and I had been awake for more than 30 hours; and Mark had been driving for three hours plus the four hours, to pick me up in Kelowna that same morning. We were done.
An hour later, we finally made it to Mark’s place in the quaint little mountain town of Rossland. We had a delectable home-cooked dinner before collapsing in bed. Unfortunately, the restful sleep didn’t last long. Rummaging noise in the neighbour’s back yard had us peering through the second-floor bedroom window. It was pitch black, but by the sound of it, a black bear was likely inspecting the yard and some beer cans left behind by the neighbour.
We left the bear to its business and I finally turned the page on my first summer day in southern B.C.
