An early rise (as always during our holiday) starts with what can be loosely described as breakfast at the Travel Lodge. It involves being crammed into a tiny room shared by the reception desk, with the other residents lining up to butter toast or dispense cereal from downward-facing containers. I almost skipped it, but one slice of dry, horrible cold toast and we’re heading for Vernon.
Lake Okanagan
Vernon – in my opinion – is one of the nicest housed areas we’ve seen, and there’s still plenty of hills and mountains in every direction to keep it picturesque.
We head up to Silver Star Road where our destination is a hotel called The Castle On The Mountain and it’s owned by Ray Clark and family – brother to my friend Kev, who lives half a mile away from me on the Isle Of Wight.
It’s a beautiful house, and the view is spectacular out of our front-facing window. We drop our luggage off and Ray briefs us on a couple of places to visit before we head into Vernon’s centre for some tourist time.
A wild deer we saw in Ellison Park
The town itself is the usual collection of shops, so we head out to Ellison Park – in particular a lovely little spot looking out over Lake Okanagan. Unbelievably the toilets are Chris Ettritch-proof: they’re simply holes in the ground covered by huts… and you certainly wouldn’t want to drop your wallet down one…
20km in the other direction (40k with Jo’s navigation skills) and we quickly visit a quaint farming community called Lumby before finding ourselves at the Shuswap hydro-electricity site – a very impressive amalgamation of nature and man-made machinery.
The Shuswap Hydro-electricity Plant
Afterwards we went back into Vernon and visited the Davison Orchard where they were ending their season of pumpkin harvesting. I was so hungry by this time I was sampling all of the free biscuits and dips on offer… and I heartily recommend the apple butter!
A bunch of pumpkin heads.
Pizza and pasta dinner at Boston Pizza that evening and we were done for the day, retiring back to our comfy room in the Castle On The Mountain to blissfully relax…
…unaware that tomorrow I would inadvertedly almost kill ourselves and two other people…
Jody Neil Ruth 