Saturday - It must be raining!

Today the National News & weather forecast was all about the rain! We thought that we would have got away from the doom and gloom of bad weather, but it apperared that British Columbia, or certain parts of it, were experiencing unprecedented amounts of rain. The Mighty Frazer river had several flood warnings along its course.
We left The Waterfront Inn at 8.45 and breakfasted at a nearby Tim Horton's, a kind of Macdonald's. The place was already very busy with visitors to The Beach Cruise as well as locals. Talk was of the weather and in the short time that we were there the mist was veiling the mountain tops. We filled up with petrol, visited a bank, bought fruit and off we set towards Kelowna on Highway 97 driving alongside Okanagan Lake. We skirted Summerland and Peachland which are communities that are the perfect setting for scenery and the outdoor life, not to mention the cottage wineries and the historic Kettle Valley Steam Railway.

Kasugai Japanese Garden

Spirit of Kelowna

 We stopped at Kelowna, which sits on the 150km/94ml long Okanagan Lake,  for lunch and marvelled at the decorated supermarket trollies that were being "dashed" around to raise awareness of the homeless. Kelowna has its own "Nessie" a shy lake monster known as Ogopogo. Here we took time out to visit the serene Kasugai Japanese Garden, a genuine Oriental garden built as a project between Kelowna and its sister Japanese city. It was a very tranquil garden sitting behind City Hall. As we left Kelowna we were caught up in torrential rain which made driving conditions tricky to say the least: the wipers did not make any difference and it was rather difficult to negotiate ourselves out towards Vernon.

Vernon is the oldest city in B.C's interior and the home of the historic O'Keefe Ranch.Cornelius O'Keefe was a 19th century cattle entrpreneur who drove his herds north to provide beef for gold miners. The ranch was the largest in the region and had a church, general store and post office, today it is a museum and is tended by what we would term the National Trust. http://www.okeeferanch.ca/
Sadly, we arrived at 4p.m. just in time to have the last tour of the Mansion which was lived in until 1977. A folk group, The Kettle Valley Brakemen, were playing to a rather depleted audience in torrential rain. We were very sad to arrive rather too late to have a good look around. Once back on the main Highway we had to decide whether to go along Highway 97 to Kamloops or 97a to Salmon Arm, due to the weather conditions we motored on to Salmon Arm which would prove to have been a wise choice.
Once we had checked in to the Super 8 Motel, we did our first lot of washing and emailed the family. Then it was relaxation time at the Settlers Pub which was directly behind the motel. After a fantastic meal of ginger beef and salad with raspberry dressing we had a long chat to the waitress who told us of the adverse weather and driving conditions. There had been a mud slide on Highway 1at Sicamous on the way to Revelstoke and the road was closed. This news featured for a few days on the national bulletins, wooden houses and cars were floating away. We were lucky throughout our trip to be one step ahead of any  bad weather which we kept being told was unique.

Floral Clock, Vernon

The Floral Clock in Polson Park, Vernon, is a 10mtr powered clock and only one of a handful in Canada. Sadly, the planting was incomplete during our visit.