We left Nakusp on Sunday morning to head to Osoyoos, our last destination before we head to Barb and Norb on Friday.

On the 12km road up to the campsite in Naksup we had spotted some falls and promised the kids we would stop there on our way out. So we packed up early and parked up there and made our breakfast on the camping stove. We almost didn’t bring the stove but it has brought us some of our most memorable meals. Bacon baps on the side of a waterfall just sat there with a small wooden sign announcing it. If this were in England the National Trust would have a car park and charge you an extortionate entrance fee. In Canada they are so commonplace they barely managed to make a layby for it. Love it!

    

A couple of different people had suggested a more scenic route down to Osoyoos for us. So despite it already being a 5-hour journey we took their advice and headed east instead of west and did a 2-hour scenic detour. It was totally worth it.

 

They call it the West Koot Route and we picked it up from Nakusp and headed down to New Denver where instead of going directly down to Castlegar we headed east to Kaslo. Miles and miles of alpine forests, crystal clear lakes and most of it runs alongside a creek that runs down into Kootenay Lake.

  

Obviously the children just loved the whole scenic route and took the opportunity to catch up on some sleep!

We knew we were in the right place when suddenly the landscape changed into nothing like we’d really seen before. Hills instead of mountains. Desert landscapes. Very dramatic and very welcome.

The campsite is also like nothing we have stayed at before on this trip. Called a resort it really feels like one. Small site with only 50 pitches all very smart and clean. Expensive but included in the price is free use of the laundry (they might revise that when they see the boxes full of stinky stuff we are about to wash), gym (hmmm not sure we will make it in there) and the lounge (really, what the hell are we going to do in there?!?).

The weather was beautiful, which was very very welcome. Somehow we seem not to have had to use our sunscreen in a very long time. We were looking forward to a few days of sun and sea (well lake).

We had an absolutely lovely time here. We spent days on the little beach at the campsite. The kids swam and we sunbathed and floated on our lilos.

Met a great family on our first day at the beach, the Wakabayashi’s. Steve and Pam and their 2 youngest kids, Jackson and Mason, were lovely, it was Bubba, their 2 month old American Bully that we fell in love with.

Steve took us all out on his 3 man donut off the back of his jet ski, which was brilliant fun. We had more than a few beers on the beach with them and a great evening with a lot of laughter!!

Jackson is a great skateboarder, taking part in lots of competitions and has sponsors etc so the boys were in complete awe of him and hung on his every word. He was lovely with them and patiently showed them a few tricks to try out and gave them lots of advice.

We can’t really lay claim to having explored much of the area as we mainly just enjoyed the incredible weather. Osoyoos is the most southerly point of the Okanagan Valley, famous for it’s great weather and wine (any clues yet as to why we picked this particular destination!!?).

There are over 120 wineries in the Okanagn, most offering tastings on their patios, at the side of the vineyards and lake settings. We managed to drag the kids to only 2; Moon Curser and Road 13 being our choice. Great story behind the name Moon Curser to do with the workers on the gold mines that used to exist here and the secret journeys they made back over into the USA at the border just a few miles from here in the dead of night, cursing the nights with a full moon for fear of discovery!

The area is famous for it’s wine due in no small part due to the heat (it regularly gets up to 40 degrees in the summer) and also due to the ‘Lake Effect’ which cools the area due to the lake’s depth. They say it is comparable to the wine produced along the Rhine. Anyway, it was delicious and we decided any more visits would result in us spending even more money and probably be responsible for a rather severe hangover, so we left it at that.

  

As well as the vineyards they are hundreds of fruit orchards. We lost count of the number of fruit stalls at the side of the road. The blueberries and cherries are truiy the sweetest and most delicious we have ever tasted.

We had read that another thing on the Great Canadian Bucket List in the area was to take the Penticton Float. So this is a river channel that links Lake Okanagan to Lake Skaha built in the 1950’s to control flooding which now finds itself serving as a ‘natural water park’. The day we ‘floated’ was cloudy so we had the channel almost to ourselves and enjoyed a couple of hours of peaceful chilling on our own lilos – John dozed, William snorkeled, Charlie chatted away to himself and I just relaxed, I can imagine on a sunny weekend it would be full of groups of people enjoying a drink or two on the way down so possibly not as peaceful (a huge sign at the ‘halfway point’ advertised “Beer Store – 30m”) but we loved it!

So after 5 very relaxing sunbaked days we finally set off on Friday morning towards Abbotsford and Barb and Norb!!!! Stopping first to let the boys try out some of their newly acquired skateboarding skills at the Osoyoos skatepark.

Just outside of Osoyoos is a very strange natural phenomenon which they claim is the 8^th Wonder of the World (no idea whether in fact this is merely claimed by the people who write the local tourist magazines…) – the Spotted Lake. Late in the summer when the lake has evaporated large circular mineral rings appear breaking through the lakes surface. The Okanagan First Nations own the land and hold healing ceremonies here as they believe the mud has medicinal properties. Beautiful!!

A very quick lunch at Bromley Rock Provincial Park as recommended by Steve. A stunning spot on the river with it’s own sandy beach and high rocks from which to dive. Sadly we had left the sunshine behind and by the time we got there the temperature had dropped so much that we were forced to wear jumpers and jeans for our picnic.

The road between Osoyoos and Abbotsford suddenly became familiar as we took this route 6 years ago on our very first RV holiday. We had hired one from a place in Vancouver and did a 10 day tour round BC, starting and ending at Barb and Norb’s. We have talked a lot about that trip over the last 93 days, as it was that trip that started our passion for this kind of holiday / travelling. So it was lovely to drive past a campsite we stayed at all those years ago when our boys were little.

One last stop before we arrived in Abbotsford was at Hope Slide along route 3. John had been saying he was sure that somewhere along this stretch of road we had made a stop on our previous trip. When suddenly there it was. So basically back in 1965 there was a huge landslide here when 46 million cubic tones of rock fell off the side of the mountain wiping out 3km of highway. I had absolutely no recollection of stopping here 6 years ago and to be honest I think I had probably memory dumped it due to it not being that exciting – but John was as thrilled by this today as he was then, so that was nice!!

I think we have all been looking forward to our time with Barb and Norb and their family since the moment we arrived in Canada, so to be finally on our way to them is so very exciting.