Our Kamloops B&B innkeepers told us that if we took a detour from the well-beaten path when we left for Kelowna on Thursday we might be able to see the Fall Sockeye Salmon run. Since we weren't in a hurry, we took their advice and drove about an hour north east until we reached Adams Lake.
The Adams River Salmon Society was preparing to put on the "Salute to the Sockeye" festival to celebrate the return of these brilliant red fish from the Pacific Ocean to their ancestral spawning grounds. Although these fish (and Coho and Chinook Salmon) return to the river each Fall, every four years there is a "bumper crop" of spawning fish and the festival is held. We were lucky enough to be in B.C. for this big event. Thousands of people come to the festival and although there were quite a few visitors (including some groups of school kids) on Thursday, the place will really be hopping on Sunday.
We walked a mile or more around the area, stopping at several places to see the fish in the swallow waters close to shore. Farther away from us, the masses of sockeye made the river look like gallons of red dye had been spilled into the river. The female fish wagged their tails back and forth to create nests in the rocky river bottom where their eggs would be laid. Some fish leaped in and out of the water. Some who had finished spawning, lay dead and decomposing, returning nutrients to the ecosystem.
Here the semi-arid land extending east from Kamloops had had given way to forests and the huge Shuswap Lake, a body of water resembling the large mountain lakes, Coeur d'Alene and Pend Oreille, in northern Idaho. After doing our fish-watching, we stopped at Toby' Coffee Shop in Sorrento (named by a man who spent his honeymoon in that Italian town). At the suggestion of one of the staff at Toby's we turned off the main highway at Salmon Arm and followed a country road that ran through farmland until we re-connected with Highway 97 northwest of Vernon.
At the end of the afternoon we arrived in Kelowna which, much to our surprise, was not a small, wine-country town like St.Helena, but a city of well over 100,000 residents. Our first impression of the place was not favorable: Stop-and-go traffic, lots of chain stores and restaurants, and our in-aptly named hotel (the "Prestige") was located right on the main road through town. After a very disappointing first-night's dinner in Kelowna and finding our hotel a big step down from the accommodations we had earlier in the trip, we considered staying one-night and moving on.
The only downside to the B&B we stayed at in Kamloops is that it was just a couple of blocks from the major east-west tracks of the Canadian Pacific Railway and freight trains were often on the move along that route. On Wednesday night we were stuck for five minutes waiting for a train to clear the grade crossing before we could return to our lodgings.
When we left Kamloops Thursday morning we were "racing" eastbound trains on tracks parallel to Canada's Highway 1 and "winning." Fortunately, we never had to try to beat a train at a crossing.
Since both our B&B and the restaurant were we had dinner Tuesday night were well east of the city center, we didn't get a look at downtown Kamloops until Wednesday. About 90,000 people live in the area, and the downtown is roughly the size of Santa Rosa. There is a mix of old and modern architecture, and some upscale (e.g., women's dress shops) and downscale (like the "Value Village" and "Frou Fou Monkey") businesses.
After breakfast we drove into town, tossed our duds into washing machines in a laundromat, and then walked through the block-long farmer's market. The produce looked very good, but we could just "window shop" since we only had a microwave in our B&B room. The cabbages were the size of soccer balls. One man had come from Italy and grew magnificent looking chard on a small lot somewhere in town. A couple displayed some delicious looking pastries that they make in a commercial kitchen in their home's basement.
The laundromat was attached to a dry cleaners and the woman running it was both helpful and a hoot. She carefully counted out the change we needed for the machines and estimated how long it would take us to dry our clothes. She told us Wednesday would probably be a slow day --- only 250 folks coming in to do their laundry as opposed to 500 at the end of the week.
One women rolled in her clothes and other belongings in a grocery cart she'd "borrowed" from Safeway. We overhead her talking on her cell phone and telling a friend that she'd just been evicted from her digs, but that she'd managed to get her hands on things that (an ex-boyfriend?) had apparently swiped from the friend. She told her friend that she needed back a sleeping bag she'd lent out. A ratty looking sedan was parked behind the laundromat; I wasn't sure if it was her "motel", or if she'd be "sleeping rough" in the nearby park along the river.
After we finished our laundry we walked through the downtown looking for a couple of restaurants that our guidebooks had recommended. A few guys, obviously down on their luck, sat next to the sidewalk and played guitars hoping that passers-by would leave a few coins in their open cases.
We had a decent lunch in the comfortable wood-paneled Rick's Mediterranean Grill, one location of a small, B.C. restaurant chain, then strolled down to the river and watched salmon jumping. A small boy had gathered up a bunch of maple seeds with little "wings" attached to them and launched them into the air from a pier jutting above the river; they made their way down to the water, rotating around and around, like little helicopters. In the evening we returned to the downtown area and had a well-prepared seafood dinner at Brownstone, one of the better Kamloops restaurants.
Our innkeepers had given us passes to the B.C. Wildlife Park so he hopped back in the car and drove a few miles east of town to the park's rural location. We arrived in time to see the two cougars, Zoe (the female) and Fraser (the male) being fed. The keepers are careful not to enter the cougars' enclosure lest they be added to the puma's carte d' jour.
The park has a smattering of other critters: Elk, bison, a solitary badger who paced back and forth in his cage, a couple of mountain goats and big horn sheep, a bunch of bleating goats, some burros, one llama, a couple of raccoons, and a few bald eagles and assorted owls.
A 35-year old arthritic grizzly bear munched on his dinner of veggies and fruit, and then fell sound asleep. We learned that in the wild he would have had a life expectancy of only about 20. Unfortunately, his twin sister had to be put down this past summer so when he wakes up from his winter's sleep he'll be all be himself in Spring for the first time in his life.
The park buildings looked new, but the animal enclosures needed some spiffing up, and there were altogether too few animals on view to make it much of a wildlife viewing experience.
Before we left Nita Lake Lodge this morning the clouds parted just enough to allow us to see the top of the small mountain to the west of the lake. After we passed over the River of Golden Dreams the summit of Whistler Mountain waved goodbye to us on our way up Highway 99 to Pemberton, 32 kilometers to the north. The Green River in Whistler was left behind, the "Big Muddy" So River lay ahead, followed by the milkshake colored Nairn Falls.
We stopped for gas in Pemberton, then turned east and drove through tiny Mount Curie. It was clear that we had passed into the territory of the "First Nations" --- instead of new homes and hotels, we saw shacks, trailers, and junked cars. Neither broncos nor Brahma bulls were bucking at the rodeo grounds. High-shouldered mountains rising above the valley reminded me of Austria.
The mountains were leading us southeast, but just as we reached the shallows of either Birkenhead or Lillooet Lake, the road turned sharply to the north and corkscrewed its way steeply up into the mountains. For next two hours we climbed and descended through alternating landscapes of dense forest and alpine meadows. At Joffre Lakes glaciers drooped down from the peaks.
We pulled off the highway at Duffey Lake to look back in the direction we had come. Gray Jays flew back and forth low across the road and finally landed on Cindy's hands to beg little morsels of food.
Drier, rockier ranges of mountains lay along on path as he continued east. We crossed Cayoush Creek on one-lane bridges. Alders or aspens that had turned pale to bright yellow stood out against the dark green of firs and pines.
In the little town of Lillooet we stopped for lunch at Dina's Place, a Greek-themed restaurant, then
the mighty Fraser River which flows all the way to the sea at Vancouver. We drove through increasingly arid mountains that slanted down to tilted benchlands of irrigated alfalfa that dropped off into steep, eroded gullies.
At Pavilion and Marble Canyon we re-entered a more alpine landscape, then hit dry, rolling hills again. During a refueling spot at Cache Creek, I spoke with a young black man wearing a Ghana soccer jersey. He had seen the Oregon license plates on our rental car and asked if we hailed from that state. As we pulled out of the gas station he walked down the road after seeing off a friend who had boarded one of two Greyhound buses that used the place as a de facto bus stop.
Turning east again put us on track toward Kamloops following the route of the Thompson River. The hills to the south resembled Idaho potatoes piled high above the river. The North and South Thompson Rivers meet at Kamloops, flow west and widen into Kamloops Lake, then narrow again and eventually meet up with the Fraser River. Finally, after seven hours of traveling across this varied landscape we arrived at our B&B.
We arrived in Kamloops about 5 pm Tuesday (in a later post I'll talk about our mostly sunny drive through a varied landscape from Whistler to here), settled into our room at the Riverside B&B, and sat on the dock watching the South Thompson River flow by as the sun dipped low in the sky and began casting shadows on the dun colored hills sloping down to the opposite bank.
But here's our dilemma: What do you call the "locals" who inhabit this town in B.C.'s interior? Are they Kamloopers? Maybe Kamloopians? Or Kamloopans? We'll ponder that imponderable question over dinner at "Storms On The River" where we hope the weather (and the staff) will be calm.
Monday's weather forecast was spot-on: Rain beginning in the morning and continuing until Tuesday.
We have yet to see the tops of the tall mountains allegedly surrounding Whistler. Low clouds hung over the valley again this morning when we went down to breakfast. But the weather didn't deter two die-hard groups of outdoors folk: Mountainbikers who rode in a steady stream below our hotel window and fishermen who were bobbing up and down in Nita Lake with their feet dangling down from those inner tubes-cum waders..
After breakfast we wandered around the hotel and discovered that the station for the Rocky Mountaineer excursion train that runs daily between Vancouver and Whistler was located at the end of the hotel complex. We had considered taking one of the company's other train trips between Vancouver and Banff, but decided it was too pricey --- five days travel and lodging for about the same cost as our two-week auto tour of B.C. The train was due in at 11:30 am, but when we left the hotel about noon, it looked like it still had not arrived.
Since the likelihood of seeing the sun was nil and the temperatures were hovering below 60 degrees, we opted to spend a good part of the afternoon at the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre, a museum devoted to the two "First Nation" tribes whose territories overlap at Whistler. We learned how they used cedar trees to meet many of their needs such as rope, clothing, canoes, and housing.
After leaving the museum we walked up and down the "Village Stroll", an auto-free pedestrian lane lined with shops and restaurants in the heart of Whistler Village. Cindy looked for a new wool hat, but couldn't find one to meet her tastes. Summer is over here and the 2010 Winter Olympic Games have long since ended, but there were enough people wandering about to make us glad that we had chosen to stay a few miles to the south along the peaceful shores of little Nita Lake.
Our hotel room is quite spacious with a living room separated by a partial wall from the bedroom, and a large bathroom with radiant heat in the slate floor. We could have just stayed here in comfort all day, reading and relaxing, but since we're driving to Kamloops tomorrow, we put on our rain jackets and went off to explore Whistler.
The rain was fairly light at mid-day and the wind wasn't too strong during our long walk from the main parking lots at Whistler Village to the museum, and only a few sprinkles fell as we wandered around the village later in the afternoon. Showers are expected to continue in B.C. until sometime tomorrow afternoon when, with luck, we'll have seen the last of the rain and clouds for at least a few days.
After breakfast Sunday morning we loaded up our rental car and reluctantly bid adieu to Kitsilano Suites. Having your own well-appointed apartment in a quiet neighborhood near a vibrant shopping and restaurant street made us feel like we were becoming "locals."
The relatively heavy overnight rain storm had all but petered out when we crossed the Lions' Gate Bridge and left downtown Vancouver in our wake as we headed north along Howe Sound, up-bound for Whistler on the "Sea-to-Sky Highway" as this stretch of Canada Route 99 is known. The low clouds, tree-covered islands, and steep cliffs diving down from above us and into the sea were reminiscent of our "summer" trip to Southeast Alaska two years earlier. But unlike the Panhandle of the 49th U.S. State, here roads connect cities and towns and are full of traffic.
After a quick lunch of hot-dogs and fries at the A&W (which still makes great root-beer) in Squamish, we drove a few miles back south to the mining museum at Brittannia Beach. In its heyday it was the largest copper mine in the British Commonwealth and also produced a smattering of gold, silver, lead and zinc. It operated from 1904-1974. One to two thousand miners and family members lived in the company town higher up the mountain, but until 1958 when the highway was built, neither they nor the ore produced by the mine could make it to the outside world by means other than boat.
We browsed around the museum's exhibits, then donned hardhats, climbed aboard a mine tram, and rode into the mountain's labyrinth of tunnels on an hour-plus tour. Our guide showed us how the miners drilled holes in the rock that would hold sticks of dynamite used to enlarge the tunnels, a process that made many of them deaf, and killed others in as little in six months when the silica dust from the blasts destroyed their lungs.
Just about anyone could get a job as a miner in those days, but before you could pick up a drill, you had to spend a month performing a disgusting job ---- pushing a rolling "toilet" to where the miners were working, then dumping its contents out before starting your "porta pottie" rounds all over again.
We ended the tour at the bottom of the mine's 20-story high milling building and learned how the ore-bearing rocks were crushed, pulverized, and processed to produce the fine power that would be hauled by ships to smelters where it would be refined into pure copper.
After spending most of the afternoon at the mining museum, we hopped back in the car and drove north to Whistler, passing the huge monolith at Squamish known as "The Chief" and stopping briefly to walk to the foot of 1,000 foot Shannon Falls. Both of these natural features would look at home in Yosemite Valley.
