Off to Vernon

We had a nice drive over Highway 97 to Vernon today, about an hour. We didn't bother hooking up the car so I drove behind Ron. It's a very pretty area, with small farms and dry sagebrush on the hills. We went past Monte Lake, Westwold and Falkland which displays a large flag up on the mountain above the town. You could see ginseng farms with the black canvas covering the crops.
Got to Roger and Myrna's in Desert Cove, a nice development beside the Spallumcheen Golf and Country Club. Their house is at the end of the row, looking up to green hills. After dinner we sat outside and watched deer up on the hillside. Coyotes were yipping away as well..

Wares in Merritt

More family visiting. We drove the car down to Merritt today to visit my niece Carrie and Ryan, plus Charley, their 6 month baby. It's Merritt mountain Music Festival time so we wondered about the crowds but the thousands of music lovers were all up the mountain, enjoying the sounds or cooling off in the river. It was 39 Celsius today.
We enjoyed seeing Ware's house and new deck and really enjoyed seeing our newest relative. Here's Ryan and Charley with his Fuzzy 1 2 3's, cloth book I'd made for him. His reading skills are a little slow but his teething practice is going strong.

Downtown Kamloops

Kamloops says their downtown is a jewel nestled in a valley oasis where two mighty rivers join. That would be the North and South Thompson Rivers. They started restoration and revitalization in 1980 of this old area which has resulted in huge shade trees, cobblestone sidewalks, outdoor cafes and colorful flowers creating a friendly and relaxing ambiance. It is a vibrant core and people are enjoying things everywhere. They have "Live @ Lunch", open air musical performances day and evenings.
The city competes in the Communities in bloom Program and has won several times. The results are a sea of flowers around town. There is Marigold Row with an explosion of yellow and orange flowers stretching for three blocks. Tere was also a blooming friendly competition vying for the title of best planter pot. Many large hand painted pots brimming with beautiful flowers line Victoria Street.
Karen treated the 3 of us to pedicures so we walked through this area with red, pink and purple pretty toenails. It's very pretty here. I forgot my camera downtown so here's 2 sets of toes.

Visit with Karpuks

I'm discovering that Kamloops is a great little town. There are 30 Heritage buildings that you can see on a walking tour which would take about 2 hours.
More cleaning and installing going on today in the motorhome and house. Ron and Chuck replaced our bathroom ground fault switch today and finetuned the TV bracket.
We went out to my niece Kathleen and Stephen's new house today and took the burgers with us. I figure the unemployed folks have more time than the working ones. They have a lovely 3 bedroom, basement house and many plans to upgrade as time goes on. Their yard is huge, a delight for Alexandra. My sister Rosemary and Alex from Nelson were also there, so that was a bonus.

Mini Golf

Off we went to play mini golf with Shane and his two kids. You can imagine the laughs as we putted our way around the course. Sometimes you just can't get your game right and you can manage to get 7 strokes on a 3 hole.

New TV

Big excitement today. We went to Costco and both bought a new TV, ours is 32" and C and K's is 52". Needless to say lots of work was being done by the boys at home while I took the girls out for lunch.
This picture shows the red colored trees that were killed by the pine beatle. It's been a very serious problem for the last 5 - 8 years. I've heard that they've been able to harvest some and found a market in Japan as the wood has a blueish color to it.

Off to Kamloops

We had an easy pleasant drive down to Kamloops today. I saw log fences and even new log homes being built. It seemed that about 50% of the trees had turned red and been killed by the Mountain Pine Beetle. We arrived at the Chevron cardlock to fuel at 3 p.m. and filled our propane tanks. Then we motored over to Chuck and Karens and parked in front of their house. He even ran a line out and plugged us into 50 amps. Bonus. Karen had the whole family over for dinner and to see us so it was lots of fun.