Off to our Favourite Campground

Nicola Valley

 The N'kwala forest service recreation site 20 minutes west of Merritt is our most frequented campground.  We started coming here in the 90's as a meetup with Leo's relatives: his brother Arthur from 100 Mile House, his cousin Eric and his aunt Louise fom Williams Lake and his cousin Doreen and husband John from Delta.  Later we camped here while paddling the Nicola River with our friends.

It's free, it's big and there's always a spot to camp, even on busy weekends as it was when we arrived on this trip.

In among the Ponderosa pines

We didn't get a picnic table but we did get a primitive fire ring (stones).

We went for a walk along the river. Lots of spawned out salmon.

We ran into a local who told us that most of the Nicola Valley was burnt up.  You couldn't see anything fom the campsite.

The next morning we hiked up the hill overlooking the campground.  Somehow we missed the trail so ended up bushwacking up the (steep) hillside.  Bushwacking is not that big a deal on a dry interior hillside.

It took us half an hour to reach the overlook.

You can see our trailer down there.

Closeup

From there we walked uphill for another hour.

Steep

I had to take a few breaks.

But we finally reached the top.

From here we could see that the fire had burnt up the next hill.

We found it even harder to go downhill on the steep slope.  We finally found the trail 5 minutes from the bottom.

Plant of the day:

Prickly Pear Cactus

Bird of the day was Clark's nutcracker, but no photos.

The next day as we drove home westward toward Spences Bridge, we saw that the fire had burnt all the hillsides on both sides of the Nicola River and a few homes had burned down.  Most however were saved.

Burnt to the road

This is the same fire that burnt down Lytton.

Checking out the damage

So ended our last camping trip of the season.  We used our trailer 23 nights this year, which averages out to $1135 per night thus far.

For comparison we spent approximately 340 nights in our old trailer over 11 years, for an average of 31 days a year or $41 per Night.  That included 4 lengthy snowbirding trips so I think we did pretty well this year.

Hike in Kalamalka Lake Provincial Park

Our second day in Vernon we hiked to Cosens Bay in Kalamalka Lake Provincial Park. 

 Nice views of upland meadows then you walk down through Ponderosa pine forest

Okay, maybe Leo is climbing back up again in this picture

to the beach.

 

I had to admire how tall the oregon grapes grow here and the size of the berries.

The park was busy with hikers and mountain bikers. On the way back we stopped at a bench and had a snack and admired the view:

Vernon and Kalamalka Lake

Beautiful Kalamalka Lake

 Our next destination was Kekuli Provincial Park on Kalamalka Lake near Vernon in the Okanagan Lake.  We arrived shortly after 11 am.  The campsite was already full; fortunately, they allow overflow camping in the parking lot, but only for 2 nights.  

We forgot to take a picture of our trailer, but we took one when we stayed in the parking lot 2 years ago, only it wasn't as crowded.  By evening there were 20 rvs in the overflow and we had large motor homes parked on either side of our standard width parking slot.

They told us we could get in line in the morning for the 4 sites that would be vacated that day, but that would mean lining up at 8 am and waiting till checkout time at 11 am.  We declined.  We heard there were sites available down the road at Ellison Provincial Park on Okanagan Lake so we drove over to check out the situation.  It was also full but had overflow parking in a small lot more suitable for vans than truck and camper.  So we decided to stay where we were for 1 more night and then move on.

Nevertheless we had a good time.  The first day we paddled over to the other less populated side of the lake. 

Typical bad selfie

There's steep cliffs coming down to the water on this side. 

 You can see how clear the water is in the lake.

There were a few ducks, geese and grebes on the water.  Let's call this red-necked grebe

the bird of the day!

In the evening we walked the rail trail along the west lakeshore until dusk.

Walhachin and Wildfire Tourism Part 1

View of Thompson River from Walhachin

 On our second day at Juniper Beach we took a driving tour of the area. We'd never been to Walhachin, a semi ghost town on the other side of the Thompson River.  It was settled by British colonists who tried to turn it into an Orchard and farming community but it was mostly abandoned after most of the men enlisted in the First World War and the irrigation flume was damaged.  Now there are about 25 people living there.  

There's a good spot for birding right before the Walhachin bridge.  We forgot to take any pictures of the town which is a mix of nicely kept up homes and junky rural hoarder hovels.

The wildfires came just up to the top of the hills behind the townsite.  We tried to drive up to get a look but the Forest Service road was closed for safety reasons.  (All the wildfires were out after rains in late August/early September.)

There's more people living on the highway side of the bridge now on recently developed properties.  We checked them out too.  There's even a vineyard down by the river that we could see from the old townsite side.

Next we used the facilities at Steelhead Provincial Park in Savona.  This campsite was also almost full. 

Then we drove to Tunkwa Lake Park to see the wildfire there.  The park was closed but we drove in anyway.

Scofflaw

The park is burnt right to the roads and the lake, but all the campsites and infrastructure were spared.  

When we drove further towards Logan Lake the fire had burned very hot.  A few structures were lost but most were saved though the rest of their properties we burned.

The fire burned very hot here. You can see the ghosts of where the fallen trees burnt to ash.

Logan Lake was not affected by the fire though they were all evacuated. We meant to have lunch there but Leo forgot his wallet and his vaccine pass and there are no takeout places in this small mining town.

Last Camping Trip of the Year

 We decided to make one more trip in our trailer before the end of the season and headed south to try to catch some warmer weather. Our first campsite was Juniper Beach Provincial Park on the Thompson River between Cache Creek and Kamloops.  

It was busy!  And the sites are very close together. But we managed to snag a prime spot at the end of a row because our trailer is shorter than most.

This meant we had a view across the river instead of the side of someone else's RV.

And because this is a former private RV park and we're past peak camping season, we got electrical for the Senior's rate of only $16.50.

A highlight (?) of this campsite is the fact that the CPR rail line runs by on one side of the river and CN on the other.  Thus a train goes by approximately every 20 minutes!  I've actually met two train buffs who camp here for that reason.  

We camped here 20 years ago in tents when we paddled the Thompson from Savona to Ashcroft and found it crazy noisy.  But in our insulated trailer we actually slept through most of it.  

Here I'm standing in the middle of a bunch of rabbit brush, one of my favorite shrubs because it flowers in the fall when everything else is dying up in sagebrush country.

Closeup:

There's not too much to do here if you're not a fisherman, but we walked east along the river for an hour

where we found a floodplain dotted with asters and brown-eyed Susan's.

In the evening we found a trail along the cliff above the river going downstream for another 1 hour hike.

Bird of the day:  Lapland longspurs passing through on their migration south.

Around Town

The water level in the creek valley got so low in August we were able to put a plank across the stream and access the other side and walk our former circle route from one side of the valley to the other.  Above Patti and I are standing in the field on the south side of the valley.

One morning Patti and I spotted a young bear on the road along the creek, he instantly ran away, and we turned around and headed back out.  The next day we found bear poop and tracks in the same area. 

Then when we walked back up the hill we saw the bear at the top staring down at us, before he took off.