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Back in Canada we are busy enjoying friends and family and doing the things that we love to do here at home, which remind us why we love Canada. Our house continues to be rented so the first two weeks in Westbank we spent a Ken's parents place, taking over their spare room, and then moved on to my parents house where we moved into my old bedroom in the basement. When will the kids really leave home???
As always we can't be without our wheels (2 down on the rubber kind) so we purchased a beautiful white Suzuki 650 for Ken and a racey (ha, ha) red KLR 650 for me (on which Ken cut down the seat and adjusted the front forks so I can just barely touch flat foot), I love it. We also decided to buy a van to camp in for the rest of the summer and fall. We found a solid, rust free, '92 1 tonn Chevy-van in Osooyos with lots of room to throw our mattress on the floor in the back along with a propane cook-stove and lantern, and all the rest of the camping stuff. We have been back for just over 5 weeks now and we have made it out camping once and are getting quite a bit of use out of our bikes. With still two months left in Canada before we plan on leaving again we have time for several bike trips and camp weekends, there is always something and somewhere to see around here.
A nice day for a ride! On the way to Chris and Kim's wedding in Kamloops we stopped to enjoy the view at Trapp Lake along Hyw 5a.
Dad does the bbqing, tasty artisian pizzas...can't wait for dinner!
Ken loves anything with a motor and back at the Ficke farm he tries his hand at driving the
John Deere AO. (You have to love my mom's geraniums too!)
Who are these masked men? Ken and Tony take a ride up into bush around Westbank. Ken was lucky Tony had an extra Honda CRF450X dirtbike for him to use...he realy missed the riding.
We have some great cooks for friends. Brian and Sandy invited us down for a Dutch Oven chicken dinner, complete with roasted potatoes, carrots, parsnips and squash.
The sunset on the treetops at Windy Lake (and that was about all the sun we saw on our 4 day camping trip).
A Waterskidder (is that their real name?) sitting on top of the water...looking and waiting for what?
A nice afternoon for a paddle around Windy Lake. Ken caught a couple of fish and made it in to shore before the rain began again.
At last, the fire ban was lifted and we were able to have a campfire and warm up a little. The first night out went down to 3 degrees...brrrr.
A nice afternoon and a 275 km roundtrip from Westbank, up behind Peachland and over to Princeton via the Osprey Lake Fst Road then back thru Hedley, up the hill to the Nickel Plate mine and over to Apex and Green Lake road. Checkout the switchbacks up the hill in the background behind Thomas, Scott and Ken.
"What are you looking at?" A black bear enjoyed eating something in the bush that was lip-smacking good...
and just steps away from the bridges and latters at Hardy Falls in Peachland. We took our Czech friends (that we met on Tioman Island, Malasyia) to see the spawning Kokanee, what bonus when they also got to see their first bear!
A major transformation occurs when the Kokanee return to Deep Creek every year to spawn. The beautiful red colour lasts only for the short time before they are beat up and eventually die as they make their way upstream.
