Trains and Grizzly Bears, A Canadian Roadtrip - Abbotsford to Osoyoos, BC

Sunday, September 22

When we got up this morning it was raining so it looked like we were back to our old weather patterns again.  We took our time getting ready, relaxed a bit and had some not very tasty breakfast at the hotel continental breakfast (we seem to be on a losing streak as far as food goes) and were on the road by 10:00.  After leaving Abbotsford and driving through the town of Chilliwack, we headed up in the mountains towards the small town of Hope.

Even though it was raining, it was a beautiful drive through the mountains and as a plus, there wasn’t much traffic.  In Hope we left the Trans Canada Highway and picked up Highway 3, which is the southern most highway east in Western Canada.  We were really enjoying the drive and decided to stop in the town of Princeton and have lunch.  Finally we broke our bad luck with food and had a good lunch.  It took a while as it was Sunday around noon and of lot of the locals were having Sunday dinner there after church.

We left Princeton and followed the Similkameen River through the Similkameen Valley for quite a ways.  Again the drive was beautiful, but you could see the climate changing a bit.  This area is known as the Canadian desert and although nothing like the southwestern US desert, it was much drier than what we were used to seeing in Canada.  It is also very agricultural and noted for its fruit.  The rain had lightened and for the most part had stopped, and it was still cloudy, and we were really enjoying this drive today.

We began seeing fruit stands and when we reached the town of Keremeos they were everywhere, we've never seen so many in one place.  Keremeos calls itself the “fruit stand capitol of Canada” and I believe it.  We stopped at the Mariposa Orchards Fruit Stand and the fruit looked delicious, I wish we were closer to home as we probably would have filled up the car.  We did buy some Aurora and Ambrosia apples that are varieties we don’t have where we live and we really liked them, they were delicious.  When I looked for information on the town of Keremeos, I found that the ambrosia apple was actually developed there 20 years ago so it is a relatively new apple.  We may have to buy some more and take them home as they said they were long lasting apples.

As we left Keremeos we saw orchards like this one that were just thick with apples.

From there it was about an hours drive to Osoyoos, our destination for today.  Before we checked into our hotel, Val wanted to visit the Faustino Cidery which was nearby.  I had actually not heard the term cidery before, but there are a lot of them in the area and they make different types of hard cider.  We wanted to buy some for gifts so we sampled them and they were quite good and we ended up buying four different bottles of different varieties.

It was a short drive to the Watermark Beach Resort where we are staying tonight.  That might seem like a strange name, but Osoyoos is located on the Osoyoos Lake and the hotel is right on the lake.  We checked-in and were in our room before 4:30.  The hotel is actually a time share that rents out units that aren’t being used by the night.  We were a little surprised, but we got a very nice two bedroom, two bath unit with a living room, kitchen and deck.  The hotel is in a beautiful spot with a nice lakefront view and a boardwalk that runs along the lake through the town.

We got settled in and I decided to take a short walk along the lake and it was very pleasant.  Since we had a kitchen, instead of going out to eat, we stopped at a grocery store for the makings of a cold dinner, we really didn’t want to cook.  We also had our apples to eat so we had a nice dinner.  The rest of the evening was spent relaxing and reading although we did watch the Ken Burns Country Music History on PBS and found it very interesting.

We could walk out to our deck and down to the shore of Lake Osoyoos.

 

We did make a change of plans tonight; we had originally planned on staying in the town of Castlegar tomorrow night, but decided instead to stay in the town of Trail on the Columbia River.