Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Down And Out (Or Up) in Kamloops

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.





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