Osoyoos Friday
Thanks to the Blogger posting issues I was having last night, I've got way too many pictures to post today... so here it goes...
Yesterday morning we were still in Kamloops. I went out for a run before breakfast and I saw a place that I had to take Roby back to...
Yep, Kamloops has it's very own Italian Cultural Centre. I wouldn't have guessed there'd be enough Italians in Kamloops for a centre but there it was... I thought Roby might want to go in or something but he seemed indifferent...
...so we moved the party down the road a bit to this great lookout we found. Ok it wasn't that hard to find... I took this from the side of a fairly major road. There was a spot that I thought would have an even better view but I couldn't find the road up there. Aaaaaand we were too lazy to ask directions, so we got some gas, bought some postcards for Roby, and headed out to Ali's place in Oyama.
It was about a 2 hour drive and this is me at some random lake along the way...
Ali just bought this place a couple months ago and this is the first time I'd seen it. By the way, Oyama might sound like it should be in Japan, but it's really about halfway between Kelowna and Vernon, right by Winfield.
And this is the awesome view from the back of the house. This totally beats the view from the back of my place, which pretty much consists of a couple dumpsters, some parked cars, an alley, and the back of another building.
This is Ali, her daughter Gen, and Lola the dog... Lola is a BIG dog... half Mastiff and half Great dane. Luckily she's a really friendly dog too...
Here's me 'n Ali right before dinner... and speaking of dinner, THANKS for the awesome enchiladas Al... they'd be hard to beat
This is Alan... he bought the house with Ali but he lives in Chilliwack... he had been up in Kamloops on Wednesday night so he came over on Thursday...
Roby and Lola just lyin' around...
Staying with Ali was good because we don't get to see each other nearly enough these days. She moved up to Oyama 4 years ago I think.... maybe 5.
That's it for the Oyama pics. There's a video but I'm not posting it yet. My camera doesn't have sound so I'm trying to figure out how to add an audio track. Hey if anybody out there knows how to do that I could use some ideas....
Ok well this morning we got up and hit the road at 10:30. I wanted to make it down to Osoyoos before heading back to the coast, and it only took about 2 hours to get there. On the way we went through Kelowna (where I had originally planned to take some pics but then didn't), Peachland, Summerland, Okanagan Falls, Oliver, and some other little places I can't remember.
Like I was saying in my post from Kamloops on Wednesday, the Osoyoos area is home to...
Canada's only desert... it's a really interesting area because the landscape is a lot different than you'll find anywhere else this far north. Apparently (according to scientific people) it's the plant life that exists in the area which actually makes it a desert. Osoyoos gets up into the 40's during the summer (105+ degrees farenheit) and only gets about a quarter of the rain that Vancouver gets. Part of the desert is considered endangered though because of irrigation so there's an effort underway to restore it...
I got some pictures of the Desert Centre site (you can see part of the building in the picture above) but I got some water on my camera lens so the pictures sucked pretty bad...
...this is the road back into town... by the time we were leaving I guess most the water on the lens had dried.
The town is pretty small... this and a couple other streets are pretty much all there is for stores... The main reason I wanted to come to Osoyoos is because I might eventually be looking for somewhere to live outside the Vancouver area and I heard it was a nice place.
We drove up the side of a mountain and got this view of the area... the town on the left side of the picture is Oroville, Washington.
And Osoyoos is just upshore a bit. I was talking to a guy from Oroville who said the whole area is a lot of fun in the summer and the population of Osoyoos pretty much doubles. I should probably check it out during the winter too though... me and cold... bad combination...
After Osoyoos we hit the road again and drove to my parents' place in Abbotsford.
And on the way we stopped in at the site of the Hope slide... which is crazy to see. On a Saturday morning in 1965 part of this massive hill just gave away and slid down, covering about 3 kilometers of the Hope-Princeton Highway and burying three cars. Two of the cars were never found so they're still under it all...
They eventually rebuilt the highway a little to the south of the slide because there's no way they could have cleared it...
This is the only picture I got and it doesn't really show what's happening... this is the point where the slide debris meets the mountain but you can't see how big the pile is. It goes on forever and it's so high that I'd need a wayyyyyyy different lens to get a good picture. I wish I'd taken a video... I don't know why I didn't think of that.
Ok well that's it for the pictures... We're just hanging out this weekend and then Roby is going back to Vencie on Monday... and for me, back to reality... I should probably start thinking about some way to make some money this summer. And I have to get my articling applications out... ok ok ok I don't want to think about that til I have to next week...
In the meantime... I need sleep...
Yesterday morning we were still in Kamloops. I went out for a run before breakfast and I saw a place that I had to take Roby back to...
Yep, Kamloops has it's very own Italian Cultural Centre. I wouldn't have guessed there'd be enough Italians in Kamloops for a centre but there it was... I thought Roby might want to go in or something but he seemed indifferent...
...so we moved the party down the road a bit to this great lookout we found. Ok it wasn't that hard to find... I took this from the side of a fairly major road. There was a spot that I thought would have an even better view but I couldn't find the road up there. Aaaaaand we were too lazy to ask directions, so we got some gas, bought some postcards for Roby, and headed out to Ali's place in Oyama.
It was about a 2 hour drive and this is me at some random lake along the way...
Ali just bought this place a couple months ago and this is the first time I'd seen it. By the way, Oyama might sound like it should be in Japan, but it's really about halfway between Kelowna and Vernon, right by Winfield.
And this is the awesome view from the back of the house. This totally beats the view from the back of my place, which pretty much consists of a couple dumpsters, some parked cars, an alley, and the back of another building.
This is Ali, her daughter Gen, and Lola the dog... Lola is a BIG dog... half Mastiff and half Great dane. Luckily she's a really friendly dog too...
Here's me 'n Ali right before dinner... and speaking of dinner, THANKS for the awesome enchiladas Al... they'd be hard to beat
This is Alan... he bought the house with Ali but he lives in Chilliwack... he had been up in Kamloops on Wednesday night so he came over on Thursday...
Roby and Lola just lyin' around...Staying with Ali was good because we don't get to see each other nearly enough these days. She moved up to Oyama 4 years ago I think.... maybe 5.
That's it for the Oyama pics. There's a video but I'm not posting it yet. My camera doesn't have sound so I'm trying to figure out how to add an audio track. Hey if anybody out there knows how to do that I could use some ideas....
Ok well this morning we got up and hit the road at 10:30. I wanted to make it down to Osoyoos before heading back to the coast, and it only took about 2 hours to get there. On the way we went through Kelowna (where I had originally planned to take some pics but then didn't), Peachland, Summerland, Okanagan Falls, Oliver, and some other little places I can't remember.
Like I was saying in my post from Kamloops on Wednesday, the Osoyoos area is home to...
Canada's only desert... it's a really interesting area because the landscape is a lot different than you'll find anywhere else this far north. Apparently (according to scientific people) it's the plant life that exists in the area which actually makes it a desert. Osoyoos gets up into the 40's during the summer (105+ degrees farenheit) and only gets about a quarter of the rain that Vancouver gets. Part of the desert is considered endangered though because of irrigation so there's an effort underway to restore it...I got some pictures of the Desert Centre site (you can see part of the building in the picture above) but I got some water on my camera lens so the pictures sucked pretty bad...
...this is the road back into town... by the time we were leaving I guess most the water on the lens had dried.
The town is pretty small... this and a couple other streets are pretty much all there is for stores... The main reason I wanted to come to Osoyoos is because I might eventually be looking for somewhere to live outside the Vancouver area and I heard it was a nice place.
We drove up the side of a mountain and got this view of the area... the town on the left side of the picture is Oroville, Washington.
And Osoyoos is just upshore a bit. I was talking to a guy from Oroville who said the whole area is a lot of fun in the summer and the population of Osoyoos pretty much doubles. I should probably check it out during the winter too though... me and cold... bad combination...After Osoyoos we hit the road again and drove to my parents' place in Abbotsford.
And on the way we stopped in at the site of the Hope slide... which is crazy to see. On a Saturday morning in 1965 part of this massive hill just gave away and slid down, covering about 3 kilometers of the Hope-Princeton Highway and burying three cars. Two of the cars were never found so they're still under it all...
They eventually rebuilt the highway a little to the south of the slide because there's no way they could have cleared it...
This is the only picture I got and it doesn't really show what's happening... this is the point where the slide debris meets the mountain but you can't see how big the pile is. It goes on forever and it's so high that I'd need a wayyyyyyy different lens to get a good picture. I wish I'd taken a video... I don't know why I didn't think of that.Ok well that's it for the pictures... We're just hanging out this weekend and then Roby is going back to Vencie on Monday... and for me, back to reality... I should probably start thinking about some way to make some money this summer. And I have to get my articling applications out... ok ok ok I don't want to think about that til I have to next week...
In the meantime... I need sleep...
posted by Darren at
7:55 PM
2 Comments:
Hi Darren,
It was fun running across you on the internet again! I was your Grade 4 teacher!
By the way, Osoyoos isn't the only desert in Canada - I live in one too, called Ashcroft!
Congratulations on all your accomplishments. Will look you up when I rob my first bank to cover rent or food now I am retired! lol
Cheerio, Mrs. G, now, Mrs. B!
Wow that's great thanks for checking out my blog Mrs. B! I'm always glad to hear people are reading. I've got an aunt in Ashcroft, and I agree it's very desert-like. Actually, when I was driving up the canyon outside of Cache Creek I thought that looked more dessert-like than Osoyoos. Anyway, thanks again for stopping by!
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