On the road again- minor floods and warning lights

Canada has some large distances, and they unfortunately have to be driven, that was our plan! We had a good sleep-in until 8 am and enjoyed a wonderful breakfast of French baguette and butter and Vegemite (can you believe that Mary paid $8 for a jar of the stuff?). I have to tell you that the bread here has been an interesting experience. We bought a whole grain loaf, expecting it to be healthy, but to our dismay it was really sweet, like a cake. On investigation it contained 3 percent sugar! When we shopped yesterday we were cautious about the bread, and it took us some time to find the only loaf without sugar, which were the baguettes. All the others had sugar varying from 2 to 4 %.

Anyhow, back to the plan... Drive as far as we could. The only other item on the itinerary was a visit to the local Kelowna farmers market. This market was small, but interesting, 

W was homesick so........

W was homesick so........

Mary and Vivienne bought some a pretty necklace made from ribbon and I chatted with some scouts who I asked about bears. In response they spontaneously launched into a demonstration only rivaled by the in-flight safety demonstrations. These young scouts all joined hands and launched into a rehearsed set of instructions. Basically the messages were.. All join hands because there has never been a documented bear attack on a party group of four or more. Raise your arms up high to make yourselves look as large as you can. Look at the bear's feet and slowly back off. Don't look the bear in the eyes or show it any teeth :don't smile!...(as if you are going to be smiling at the thing that's about to tear you apart!). They also said that the scout leaders generally also talk quietly to the bear as they back off. Apparently what they say is something like "please leave us alone bear, we are just wanting to enjoy our time in the forest, we mean no harm.." etc. etc. I see an obvious flaw here. To the best of my knowledge bears don't speak English, and if they did, from the look of them I think they would expect more reverent language... I'd be putting in a lot more "please" or "Thankyou" and I would also intersperse as many "sir"s or "ma'am" s as possible. I think "your royal highness" probably wouldn't go astray.

The scouts gave me a sample of damper, freshly out of their camp oven. A lovely group of young people. They were on a summer camp and apparently having lots of fun, as evidenced by their hoarse voices from the night before (probably lots of dib dib dibbing and dob dob dobbing!

Once we had finished at the market we hit the road. We were headed for a place called Golden, but it was to be another long drive. W set up the GoPro again and we headed off.

We started along the valleys of the Okanagan, an area "known for its dry, sunny climate, dry landscapes and lakeshore communities and particular lifestyle". Kelowna is the capital of the Okanagan. The roads here are broad and traffic is frequent with many trucks. School holidays havent started yet (2 more days of relative tranquility then the summer vacation starts) so there aren't too many tourists on the roads yet.

A rare burst of tourist vehicles.

All was going well as we cruised along the valley walls, skirting lakes and occasionally crossing at their outflow rivers. The car was running perfectly. We stopped for coffee in Vernon where I saw a sign to Silver Star. Mike, a friend of ours had lived here, but I hadn't looked at the map carefully enough before our trip, so didn't realised we would be in his overseas home town. We had a great coffee here at Blenz, a new coffee shop near the end of town. We wandered into a gear shop and bought some bear bells. When hiking you attach these to your pack so they make enough noise. The bears then naturally steer clear of you. We don't really fancy having to put the scout's method into action.

After the refreshing double expresso macchiatto I had energy to burn (in fact I really had a triple expresso as Mary donated her coffee having extracted her dose of 1 nanogram of caffeine.

A new construction near the coffee shop caught my eye. There are quite a few of these buildings that appear to be all "raw" wood. I quite like their appearance.

Here's the building

And here's an art project made of the same stuff back in Vancouver

Not made to last! Hope the building is OK

We were on the road again. Road shots are boring, so here's a short movie.

MOVIE STILL BEING PRODUCED

Not far down the road from a place called Sicamous a warning light appeared on our dash necessitating a stop.

It's the "check engine" light.. so probably not important!

We pulled into a wayside stop

It used to be a service station

Not long after pulling in, the resident, Dan appeared from his soon-to-be-flooded home.. more about that in a minute. We had checked the transmission fluid and oil. Dan knew about these things and we rechecked (I didn't know that you had to check transmission fluid with the van running and in neutral).

All seemed OK.

Dan lives here.

After phone calls to our rental company we were informed that a solid "check engine" light isn't "such a bad light". If it stays on after two cold starts (two more days) we should be a bit more alarmed. If we get annoyed by the light they will direct us to a service centre.

Dan had just returned from the oil fields in Alberta. He was a little worried by the rising river (It's been raining here for 3 weeks and today was the first day of sunshine. He had moved his cows to the higher side of the valley and the river had risen 6 feet so far. With compassion... we made an exit... (!)

On the road again....

Nearing the end of our journey we came across workers preparing to lift a truck that had left the road (on a downhill run so I imagine it had been going fast, and ended up in a ditch. The truck will be a right-off but it looked like the driver might have survived, despite a pretty warped cabin.

We were a bit surprised about a time zone change, so we were an hour behind schedule all of a sudden. We chanced upon a delightful little RV Park with the very friendly Norma-Jean attending. Not far to Banff now.

Safely nestled in Camper's Haven RV Park at Donald

Evening light on fresh pine cones