oasis

the view from the balcony
blissful in any weather

We spent the weekend in Osoyoos, BC. It likes to call itself desert country, but I find that Wikipedia says it's actually shrub-steppe. That seems like quibbling though, because it's usually dry and this time of year, hot, which is what draws us escapees from the rain. It's a beautiful drive from Vancouver, if the weather behaves, which it did on our trip out. We followed the road less travelled, Highway 3 from Hope, following the Similkameen River through Manning Park to Princeton, then on to Keremeos and Osoyoos. (I love even the names.)

The first time my sweetheart and I stopped in Osoyoos was at the start of a road trip that had no plan. We meant to spend just the one night there, but realized we'd found a treasure; off season rates for a motel room with the balcony hanging over a sandy beach. So we stayed all weekend, straying out of our room to walk along the beach, and then to take drives around to some of the wineries that absolutely litter the Okanagan Valley.

We've been back several times. One year we took the kayak, but it stayed out of the water, because even though it was hot and sunny, the wind was fierce, and the waves crashed all weekend. Last year I got a sunburn the day we took the kayak out on a beautiful calm day, I was so unprepared for the leap into summer.

This year, we listened to the waves, and we saw some rain. Rain! And it wasn't warm! Well, it wasn't warm in Osoyoos terms, but still, my Vancouver self was happy to wear flip flops all weekend. And the rain was pretty inconsequential. Not what we call rain. Still, wet enough to keep us in, and I did sit outside with a blanket, even though it was warmer than Vancouver; both places are suffering unseasonably cold temperatures. People did tell us that it was hot last week. Ah well, it'll be hot next week too, but we'll be back in Vancouver. Timing is everything I guess.

So what did we do? Read. Slept. Listened to the quiet lapping of the lake outside our window which was fairly constant except for that period in the evening when lakes fall still. Sat on the balcony, drank tea and gazed at the view.

there are marmots lined up on 
the doorstep; you can see
them, if you click on the pic

We went to the pub to watch the Canucks win the first game in the latest round on their road to the Stanley Cup (whoo hoo!). Listened to the place erupt with joy (shouted along) each time a Canuck scored. Had breakfast a couple times at a local cafe, and talked with the owner about her sleepy town. Watched a colony of yellow-bellied (I looked them up, to see what kind) marmots hanging out in an empty lot. Walked along the lakeside. It was hardly hardship.

Driving home, we retraced our path through different climate zones, as the trees gradually grow thicker as you head west. We spotted lots of deer, missed hitting another little marmot. We stopped in Keremeos to visit an elderly cousin, then carried on through Hedley, where we have yet to stop to visit the now tourist site of an old gold mine. We did stop there one year to wander through a fantastic jumble of stuff in a second hand store. Hedley has about 350 people, so it's not exactly a large town. There are a lot of places it's size, too, scattered throughout the province. Osoyoos itself is hardly a metropolis, with a population apparently around 5000, though I'm not convinced of that. For the months of July and August it of course swells.

Driving outside of Vancouver always reminds me how few we are in this part of the world. It feels so crowded and busy here (it is crowded and busy here) that your perspective gets a bit warped. But outside the city, people are spread out, life is slower, and different things matter. I was thinking about this, as we wound our way home. That the recent election saw, as usual, a clean sweep of Conservatives in the interior of BC. Traveling through you realize that people have very different things on their minds, scraping a living out of rural landscapes. The concerns of city folk are different.

In Manning Park, we pulled over to admire a black bear, who considered us, and then faded back into the trees, perhaps recognizing our city dweller-ness, basically irrelevant to the bear's existence. Through the park the rain came down, drifting toward sleet as the temperature also came down, but in the end it only hinted at winter, likely just a last gasp.

The last stretch of road, before you get back to Hope, is truly awe inspiring, the tree clad mountains rising up almost vertically from the river, with the road snaking along beside it. The clouds clung in wisps adding a sense of mystery and remoteness. And the downpour reminded me that sometimes these mountains are not as permanent as they look. We drove past the Hope slide, disinclined to get out of the car in all the rain, but one year we stopped to marvel at the sight of rubble stretched through the valley, where the side of a mountain slid down in 1965.

This year we beat it out of the mountains, and raced our car down the lush green Fraser Valley where, oddly enough, the sky looked brighter out west, over Vancouver.

And there you have it. The sun is shining here, today, and it's supposed to last all week. Last week's hailstorm, history.