Week ending Apr 16, 2015 Oliver, Sicamous

Saturday we went to Osoyoos, and climbed highway 3 above the lake to  Baergnaescht B&B to visit with the owners Silvia and Fritz. They were fellow B & B owners from our Canmore days. We retired from the B & B they moved to Osoyoos and built a huge new home with excellent B&B suites.  

View from Baergnaescht

Baergnaescht

After touring their home we treated them to lunch at Papa's Firehall Bistro in Oliver. It is a new brewery, tasty beer, good food, established by some young fellows who when they graduated from university in the early 2000's couldn't find a job. Their experience of beer making, because they were too young to buy beer when they were students, has been put to good use and they seem to have a successful business.

We spent Saturday evening watching the Nascar race from Texas.

Sunday we hiked the Golden Mile Trail. The trail starts at Tinhorn Creek Winery and  goes into the Mount Kobau Range.  The winery has a couple of fences above it.  The first one is fine mesh fence that is used to keep the snakes out of the vineyard.  The second fence is electrified to keep deer and bear out of the vineyard.  The main point of interest along the hike was Tinhorn Creek stamp mill ruins, the only remaining evidence of gold mining in the mountains above Tinhorn Creek winery. We walked further on and eventually found a nice log to sit on and have lunch where we had great views of the valley.

Monday was cool and cloudy, so rather than go for a hike we did laundry and housework.

Tuesday we planned on hiking, but it was a rainy day in the valley and fresh snow on the top of the hills, so, as we are fair weather hikers, we just hung around the trailer, taking care of a few chores and packed away a few things in preparation for our move tomorrow.

Wednesday was moving day, our destination was Swansea Point, 10 Km south of Sicamous.  On our way, we started looking for a spot to have lunch in Kelowna, but didn't see any spots, in time to pull in, to park the trailer.   We did find plenty of  parking space in Vernon at the Village Green Mall, and were extremely fortunate to find Browns Social House in the mall, where we had a very nice lunch before carrying on to visit with our friends Janet and Tricia.  However, they had to go to Vancouver in the morning (we expected that), but we will remain here to make a run into Calgary (without the trailer)  to take care of some business on Monday. We will visit with them when early next week.   

On Thursday, we thought we would walk down to Mara Lake, but couldn't find an easy way to cross the highway, as the highway is being widened between us and the lake, so we chatted with a fellow living at the intersection before returning to the house.