The Stairs and the Labyrinth
Friday – August 22
We left our trailer at 8:30, and started our drive around
Lake Okanagan. Our first hike was at
Bear Creek Park, and when we got out of the car, the trail head had a sign
posted on it that a bear had been sighted on the trail. There were a lot of people and dogs on the
trail and we knew we only had to walk about 100 yards to a bridge. We found the cache right away, and went back
to the car, instead of hiking any further along the trail. It was a really pretty area, with a nice
creek running through it, so we were sorry to have to leave so soon.
We then drove about 20 miles to Fintry Falls Park. There was a cache at the top of a waterfall,
with a stairway to use, so how hard could it be? Well, silly us. It took us just about a half hour to get to
the top, with several stops to catch my breath along the way. We found the cache right away, as soon as the
muggle who beat us to the top had left. The falls were beautiful.
We also walked a labyrinth.
I started in the middle and Bill started at the entrance, and he
finished only a few seconds before I did.
The total distance of it was ½ mile.
Then we drove on to Vernon.
We had been there before, but not from the north. The drive was different, but there was less forest, so it wasn't as pretty as going the other way.
We found most of the other caches we tried for, so we had a
final total of 12 out of 15 for the day.
We went to some wonderful spots that were right in the city. The nicest was Polson Park, with streams and
hiking trails.
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| The clock really works |
We found a little Chinese restaurant for dinner, and finally
got to the cottage at 6:30. The only
thing we had to do was a load of laundry so we had a nice relaxing evening.
Saturday – August 23
It was nice not to have to clean the house before we left
the cottage this morning. We didn’t do
any cooking this time, and we only had cereal and peaches for breakfast, so all
we had to do was wash bowls and spoons and the bathroom sink. We had been worried that our legs would be
extremely sore after all those stairs, but neither of us had a problem.
We got back to camp at 8:00, just in time for our washroom
check. Pat had said at the party, that
we could skip it this time, and someone else would do it, but there was really
no point, because we had to start work at 9:00 anyway. The day was as busy as every other Saturday
has been. I made salmon sandwiches,
which I found rather icky, so Pat said I was welcome to have some leftover
lasagna for my lunch. Yum! Their dishwasher had broken this morning, so
instead of vacuuming this time, I took all the dirty dishes out and washed and
dried them.
We had a wonderful view from our trailer for the afternoon,
as nobody was camped in the space behind the one next to us, but someone just
came in to it. They’ve been running their engine for the last 10 minutes, so we
had to close our door to avoid asphyxiation.
This was Abby and Ryan’s last day. They just came over to say goodbye. They are heading for the cottage for the
night, and tomorrow they will go back to Calgary, where they will both start
their new jobs, Ryan as a teacher, and Abby as an aid for her last semester of
university. Tomorrow the new schedule
will begin, as we all try to fill the gap left by the departure of Abby and
Ryan.
Sunday – August 24
It is cloudy and Pat mentioned, yesterday, that the weather
is supposed to be bad for the rest of the week.
I cleaned the trailer this morning.
It took all of 30 minutes to do everything. I wish our house could be cleaned that
quickly.
I’m working on our plans for a trip in November with Bryanna
and Bailey. Speaking of them, I called
to see how Kathy is feeling, and I got to talk to them. It’s so hard to believe that Bry is in the
fourth grade and Bailey is in third. Why
are they growing so fast?
I found a new feature on Google Earth. If you click on “Street View” in the layers
section, many cities have actual photos, taken from the street, from. I clicked on one of the ones in front of our
house, and saw both cars in the driveway. In one of the photos of Kathy’s house, her car
and the truck are in the driveway, and in another, Rommie’s car is there. Pretty
cool!
We cleaned the washrooms and Bill came home for a salami
sandwich. He is watching “Comedy Now”,
but I think he will be asleep before too long.
I have to go to work in a few minutes, and it has started
sprinkling. If it turns into a real
rain, as Google Earth shows it is going to do, the store will be very quiet
tonight. Not too many people want to go
out in the rain to get ice cream. I’ll
probably only have customers who have run out of things they need, such as
milk.
Bill Gets His Worst Owie, Yet
Today is Bill’s 59th birthday. We will go out to dinner on the way to the cottage tonight. The day was pretty gloomy, with intermittent rain. He got an e-card from our friends Kurt and Susie, back in Sparks. Gee and Joe called and talked to Bill for his birthday. They have spend most of the summer in Maui, so we are a bit envious. We are having fun doing this, but we’d always rather be in Maui.
Bill Gets His Worst Owie, Yet
Monday – August 25
Today is Bill’s 59th birthday. We will go out to dinner on the way to the cottage tonight. The day was pretty gloomy, with intermittent rain. He got an e-card from our friends Kurt and Susie, back in Sparks. Gee and Joe called and talked to Bill for his birthday. They have spend most of the summer in Maui, so we are a bit envious. We are having fun doing this, but we’d always rather be in Maui.
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| This is the view from the store |
The store was very slow, but I had a project to do for Pat,
so I was busy from 9 to 2, when I was done with work. Bill got home at 2:15 and we quickly packed
and headed out. We went to that little
Italian restaurant in Winfield, that we like so much. We made a quick stop at the market, so we
didn’t get to the restaurant until 3:30.
A sign on the door said that they close at 3:30 on Mondays, but the door
was unlocked, so we went in. There were
only a couple of people inside, and they were already eating their meals. I asked the server, who remembered us from
last time, if we were too late for a late lunch. I said that we had driven from Westbank for
Bill’s birthday. She said the kitchen
was closed. Then she said to Bill, “You
get the tortellini with spicy sauce.”
And to me, “You like the lasagna al forno. I think we have some of those meals left,
would that be okay?” We said that would
be wonderful. She checked and motioned
us to a table. We were so glad. The server, whose name I forget, was so
friendly. Bill ordered a glass of
Chianti, and at the end of the meal, she said that because of his birthday,
they wanted to comp either the wine, or dessert. Bill chose the wine. It was a delicious dinner. We told her that we’d be leaving soon but we
will see her next summer. It’s too bad
we don’t have any places at home with service like that.
We got to the cottage by 5:30, and had a very nice
evening. The weather was nice enough to
sit on the deck for a little while, but we were driven inside by 7:00. Bill talked to both Scott and Kathy who called
to wish him a happy birthday.
Tuesday – August 26
We slept like logs until after 7. We fixed our coffee and tried to sit on the
deck, but the wind was very cold, so we sat inside. We watched the today show and a little bit of
Regis and Kelly. By then, we had
finished our bacon, egg, and coffee cake breakfast, and we tried the deck
again. It was very nice with sweatshirts
on and blankets on our laps. The wind
kept being a pest most of the morning, though.
Bill got his birthday call from Tony who was at the airport
in Memphis. He and Anais were going to
ride their Harleys to DC but tropical storm, Fay, changed their plans and they
flew there on Sunday, to start their house hunt. They were supposed to be there for several
days, but he got a call this morning, from one of his co-workers, telling him
that he had been subpoenaed for court, and had to get back right away. So, their trip was cut very short. He is going to negotiate to leave Louisiana
two weeks earlier than planned since they ruined his trip. Sherry called from McCall. They have far surpassed us in cache finds,
but our excuse is that we are working five days a week, so we can’t go out as
much as our happily retired friends.
When we left, we drove up the driveway, and over to the plum tree, to see if the plums were ripe, yet, but they are still a few days away from being ready. Bill bent down to pick one up from the ground, and when he came up, he ran into the low tree branch, and ripped his head open. He was very brave, but it is quite a deep scratch.
This is about the sixth time he has gouged, scraped or
bumped some part of his body. I guess he
should wear a helmet and knee pads.
We made it through our day off without doing any geocaching. The weather was really good on the drive
back, but we didn’t feel like doing any hiking.
We stopped in Kelowna, at the shopping district, and walked three
blocks, stopping in many of the stores.
We didn’t find anything we needed, but we had fun looking at
everything. There was an antique store
that looked promising from the outside, but when we went in, we found that it
was even smaller than our trailer, so there were no treasures waiting for us.
We got back to camp by 5:00.
We had taken a ham steak, potatoes to fry and baked beans with us to the
cottage, but since we left so early, we were going to eat them here. Unfortunately, when I started taking things
out for dinner, we discovered that we had left the ham and the parmesan cheese
at the cottage. Luckily, we had three
leftover barbequed hot dogs in the freezer, so they substituted for the
ham. It was too cold to sit outside so
we were stuck in the trailer for the night.
Wednesday – August 27
It rained most of the night, and I woke up several times,
checking to see how soon I had to get up to open the gates. Finally, at 5:00, we were both awake, and the
rain had stopped, so we got up and walked over to open them. It started raining while we were walking
back, but we got inside before it got too heavy. I went back to bed, but Bill’s back was
bothering him, so he stayed up and played a game on the computer, while
watching TV. I got up after 7:00 and we
watched the Today show before work. He
went to work at 8:00 and I waited until 8:30.
The store was very un-busy again, and Pat had me working on her charge
card statements, so that helped the time pass.
Finally, it was 3:00 and I was off, but Bill had to work until 4 today,
so it was a very long day for him.
Dinner was salad and half a pizza that we had put in the
freezer a few weeks ago. We are running
very low on everything, so we want to use up as much of our supplies as we
can. Pat said we can leave a box of
stuff here for next summer, so we will leave Bill’s work clothes, even his pink
shorts, and some supplies. Bill had
finished the last of the 20 or so books we brought with us, as well as a couple
we had picked up along the way, so we went to Westbank to see if we could buy a new one for
him. The book store was closed and the
market had nothing we wanted. We’ll try
to get back there soon.
Saturday – August 30
The store has been
winding down and I found it quite boring without any customers. It rained again Wednesday night/Thursday
morning, so Bill drove me over to open the gates. It is all of 200 steps, but he didn’t want me
getting soaked.
We left for the
cottage by 3:00 and went directly there, so we had lots of time to enjoy our
last visit of the season. We have loved
being able to escape to the peace and quiet.
On Friday, we had spent the morning being lazy, and it had changed from
a cloudy, windy day to partly cloudy and warm enough that we could venture out
without our sweatshirts. We decided to
go out for a couple of caches over at Kalamalka Lake. The last time we had attempted to go for one
of them, we had been driving at 90 (that’s km, not mph) on the highway, when
Garmy had said, “arriving at coordinates on right.” With no turnout or road to take, we had given
up. Now, we read the information more
carefully, and found out that we had to go 5 km past the cache, turn on a
little road leading to a campground, and go back to find it. We parked and found a nature trail right
away, which led us to the cache.
From there the view
of the lake was spectacular, and there was an osprey nest which had a bird just
landing in it. We were astounded that we had the camera turned on and pointed
in the right direction at the right time.
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| Osprey going to her nest |
Of course, I had to say it. Even though it appeared to be getting ready to rain, it was cool enough that we didn’t have to worry about any lightning. Not ten minutes later, we heard the rumble of thunder, as we watched the storm approach from the direction of Kelowna. We were on a long trail, with no way to get back to the car except to continue, so we got rained on and the thunder continued, but the clouds moved to the east, so we got back to the car a half hour later without having to run for it. Oh yes, Bill got, yet, another, owie, when he was moving some rocks, and one fell on his finger. He has a nasty bruise and might lose his nail.
We had wind and rain
last night, so we had to bundle up with quilts to sit on the deck in the early
evening, and then we could only stay out there for a half hour or so. We
couldn't sit out after dark at all. The nights have been so cool for the
past two weeks, that we have been sleeping under two quilts. The peace is
incredible, with only the water lapping at the shore to break the
silence. We wrapped up in quilts and went outside at 11:30 (yes, we were
actually still up that late) and the clouds were completely gone, so we got the
flashlight to keep from falling in the water, and walked out to the end of the
dock to look up at the stars (we turned off the flashlight, in case you were
wondering.) It is so dark out there, except for the couple of people who
have small lights on their docks, that we could see the ribbon of the Milky
Way, running all the way across the middle of the sky. It was
awesome. We can see stars in Sparks, but never are we able to see them as
clearly as that. We woke up a couple of hours later (after leaving the
dock and going to bed, you big silly) and it was raining and windy again.
Today was a typical
Saturday with tensions running rather high.
Because it is the end of the season, the rental trailers all had to be
cleaned and stored. We thought it was
going to be easy, because instead of 40+ new campers, we only got a few, but we
were wrong. Pat was all over the place,
making sure everything was done right, so we were all careful not to invoke her
wrath.
So, tomorrow is our
last day of work. We thought we’d clean
and start to pack on Monday and finish up on Tuesday, so we can leave Wednesday
morning.
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