Miscellaneous stuff at home

I took this picture in our back yard just before we left for Vernon.  The daisies and the mauve delphinium were just starting to come out.  I was looking forward to coming home to find this flower bed in its glory.  And it was perfect for 1 day and then we had a gully washer thunderstorm in the evening that knocked the daisies to the ground and snapped the delphinium stalks off.  Grrrrr.

Science quiz:  What animal made this 3" long poop?

I was picking red currents in the back yard.  When I came back inside I felt a giant insect crawling on the back of my neck.  I screamed!

It was this 1-1/2" long cicada, only the second one I've seen in all the years we've lived here (29!).  We hear them all summer long.

We finally got out on the Horsefly River on Wednesday evening.  It was a perfect evening, the water was warm, a good time was had by all.

Leo and Mark having a good time in the evening glow

Our ripe Saskatoon berries in the backyard are very popular with the birds.  At one time we had a family of western tanagers, cedar waxwings, house finches and juncos feeding in the bushes.

Male Western Tanager

Science quiz answer:  I've seen those feces before and figured they were squirrel, but Leo witnessed a large toad poop it out!  I guess those lumpy things I thought were seeds are actually insect parts.

We have lots of toads, but they are not making much of an inroad into the huge slug population in my vegetable garden.  They have pretty much eaten up my beans and peas and are working on my squashes now!  I have given up on having any vegetables this year and am now concentrating on killing off the slugs for next year.  I bought a bag of (nontoxic) slug bait and the war is on. 

Kalamalka Lake Provincial Park

This was my first time at this provincial park; Leo has run trail races here before.

At the starting line

As you can see, Leo was definitely the oldest runner in the 21 km trail race.  Once he took off, I walked out to rattlesnake point (top photo) where I could look over to Kekuli Bay on the other side of the lake.  I heard voices down below and thought they must be on the beach, but when I peered over the rocks, there was a group of 6 triathletes on a training swim, with their bright visibility floats.

I saw just two mariposa lilies at the end of their bloom.

Leo's run went well and I went for one last dip in the lake before we began the drive home to Williams Lake.

Vernon Car Show

There was a big car show in Vernon on Saturday covering several downtown blocks.

Lots of 50s cars and

Muscle cars,

A few european cars,

And my personal favourite,

Complete w

BX Falls

BX Creek Falls are just down the road from Cedar Falls Campground.  It was a nice shady spot on a warm afternoon.

We had to cross the creek to access the falls.

Its asteep climb back up to the road.

Swan Lake

The next morning we went for a paddle in Swan Lake, which is not a swimming lake, but good for wildlife and fishing.

There were lots of common yellowthroats and marsh wrens calling and we came across this marsh wren nest.

They make several false nests as decoys.  I stuck my finger inside and it was empty so presumably a decoy.

This eagle was sitting high in a tree overlooking the water.

We came upon a group of 10 herons fishing along the shore.  We scared them up and the flew ahead of us as we paddled along. Turns out there is a heronry just downstream from the lake.

There's a pretty nice rv park on Swan Lake, a potential camping spot in high summer.  You could just carry your boat to the water and launch from the campsite.

Cedar Falls Campground

We went for another paddle in the morning.  We passed by a sunbathing marmot

and paddled up to a steep cliff where a flock of white-fronted Swifts put on a show for us. Birds of the day!  On the same cliff, a Say's phoebe was hawking insects.

Swift cliff

When we returned, we went for a short swim, then packed up our camp and moved to Cedar Falls campsite.

Much to our surprise, Cedar Falls Campsite was actually located in a cedar forest.  Quite a change from the ponderosa pines at Kekuli Bay.  For a commercial campsite, the sites were fairly large and private.

Kekuli Bay Provincial Park

The next day we moved on to Vernon. The provincial parks in the
Okanagan are always booked right up throughout the summer, but we knew that Kekuli Bay had overflow camping.

Set up in the overflow parking

So we set up in the parking lot.  The campsite host told us we could only stay one night so we went to the visitor information centre to ask about commercial campsites.  They recommended Cedar Falls Campsite on the road to Silver Star ski resort.

Later when the campsite attendant came for the fee, she told us we could stay 3 nights.  Too late, we'd already made a reservation at Cedar Falls.

We had a little business to do in town, but eventually got too frazzled by all the traffic downtown.  Vernon is a busy place in summer!

We headed back to the lake to recharge.  We pumped up the inflatable and went for a paddle down Kalamalka Lake.

Hijinks ensued.

Later in the evening we walked down the Okanagan Rail Trail that runs along Kalamalka Lake and all the way to Kelowna.

We saw a California quail with her babies.  Further on we came upon a family of cliff swallows (birds of the day) and found their single nest.

That's a swallow peeking out of the nest

Then we were amused by some cliff dwelling marmots.

We kept walking until it got too dark to see the birds and

the evening glow lit up the hills, so we turned back to the campsite.

(Artsy shot courtesy of Leo)

Escape to Savona

Kamloops Lake from Mount Savona

We needed to escape the endless rain in Williams Lake so we took a short trip to the Okanagan with a stop at one of our favourite spots in BC, Savona on Kamloops Lake.

Steelhead Provincial Park is a former commercial campground so it doesn't have the spacious campsites nestled between the trees like your usual provincial park.  But it does have electrical sites slotted right next to each other.  Since we don't need to plug in we usually get a slightly more private site with a lake view.

Where else in BC can you sit in your campsite and watch

a pair of nesting Lewis's woodpeckers? And orioles, eastern kingbirds, cedar waxwings and yellow-rumped warblers.

There's also a sandy beach so we had our first lake swim of the summer even as a thundershower was approaching.

We read in our Backroads atlas that there were pictographs and caves on nearby Mount Savona so we drove up to the top but found nothing up there but a great view and some cell towers.

And lots of blooming stonecrop

On the way down we discovered a road leading in the right direction so followed it to the end where we found a well-used trail leading straight up the mountain.

I told you it was steep!

I struggled up, totally exhausted.

I told you I was exhausted! I also told you it was steep.

But eventually we could see the caves ahead of us

Almost there

and scrambled up the rocks to the entrance.

It was worth the hike:

Very cool pictographs

Closeup

I told you it was steep!

And a nice view down to the Tunkwa valley.

Back on the road we could see where we'd been: