Merritt is in an area of South-central British Columbia known as The Ocanagan, named after a large, 100 mile long lake. The area is dotted with lakes and rivers and is a principal recreational area for Southern British Columbia. Merritt is a small town of about 7,000 population which calls itself the “Country Music Capital of Canada.” The town has a couple of festivals each year, one of which is a very large weekend long outdoor concert event with dozens of country music acts. Many big American and Canadian country music stars play at the event every year. We were there just a couple weeks before the festival. The RV park we were staying at was doing a lot of work getting ready for hundreds of campers because the park is just a short distance from the event grounds. The town really makes a big deal of the festival. All around the town there are murals painted on the sides of the buildings depicting dozens of country music stars.On Wednesday, the 17th we started the day driving around Merritt, just doing some sightseeing. We found the local Elks Lodge, but the list we have of Canadian Elks Lodges didn’t show that it had a lounge or bar. The Elks were in their own building, which we later learned had been built as an armory for the Canadian Defense Force. No one was around, so we weren’t able to make contact with anyone from the Lodge. We had intended to do some caching, but after finding one it started raining, so we did some shopping instead. The next day we went out caching again and were able to do three caches. There were a lot more caches around, but this was primarily a rural area and most were out in the boonies. Since we weren’t familiar with the trails and back roads, we weren’t able to get to too many of them.
On Friday, the 19th of June we left Merritt and went East to Kelowna, BC. Kelowna is a large city (100,000+) located on the shore of Lake Okanagan. It is a very pretty city with some lovely lakeshore parks. We settled into the Holiday RV Resort on the North side of town. The Resort is very large and is comprised of individually owned lots which can be put into a rental pool when not in use. The lots are quite small, but the resort has several pools and clubhouses and seemed pretty nice. It clearly was not built for large coaches - I had to take a couple shots at getting around one corner just to get to our site. The resort is built on a small lake (Duck Lake) and some of the sites (not ours) are lakefront property. On Saturday we headed to a local park for a geocaching “event” we had seen on the website. We got there after the event was over, but we still met a couple of the local cachers and had a nice talk. We spent the rest of the afternoon driving around town caching and sightseeing. We added nine caches to our total.
Sunday, the 21st, was Father’s Day and the city was putting on a car show in and around one of the downtown parks. We went down there expecting a couple dozen cars and were surprised to find one of the largest car shows I have ever seen. There were a couple of hundred cars on display, and a number of them brought back nostalgic
memories. There was a nice 54 Chevy convertible (my first car) and a 61 Isetta. Some of you may remember the Isetta from the 50's and early 60's. It was made by BMW and sort of joined their motorcycle and car technologies. The car was very small and had a single door which was the front of the vehicle. It had a little two cylinder motorcycle engine. When I was a kid of about 14, living in Arizona, my dad bought a 56 Isetta as our second car. We only had it about a year before he got rid of it, but I still remember the fun rides we used to take in that little car. We spent most of the afternoon at the show. The city was also having a Barbeque Festival that weekend that we wanted to check out, but we were never able to find the park where it was being held. Monday we did some local touring and caching, adding four more finds to our collection.On Tuesday, the 23rd of June we left Kelowna and embarked on a grueling 26 mile drive to Vernon, the next town North. Vernon is on the North end of Lake Okanagan and is much smaller, about 35,000. Vernon’s claim to fame is farming, mostly fruits and berries. We stayed at another RV resort where the lots were privately owned but rented out when not in use. This one was also on a small lake, called Swan Lake. This resort was smaller, but very pretty. Interestingly, when we checked in at the resort we mentioned to the lady behind the counter that we were full timers, originally from Indio, California. It turns out that she and her husband also full time and own two lots, one there at the Swan Lake Resort, the other at the Outdoor Resort in Indio, California! (The older one) They spend their winters in Indio and their summers in Vernon. They also own a Monaco, although theirs is a Signature. Sometimes it can be a small world!
On Wednesday we headed out to do some caching, but after finding two it started to rain, so we decided to visit one of the local casinos. We assumed it was an Indian casino, but later learned that it was a corporate casino and some limited casino gaming is allowed in BC. There are also Indian Casinos in the Province, but this one, the Lakeside Casino, is privately owned and operated. After losing about 20 bucks apiece we left and went to the Vernon Elks Lodge. According to our list this Lodge had a bar and we found it open! Yea! The Lodge was downtown and the bar was not very big, in fact the bar itself was only about five feet long with no stools and didn’t have a really big selection of liquor, but there were several tables to sit at and about six people drinking. One of them turned out to be the Exalted Ruler. His name was Bill McDonald and he sat and chatted with us for about an hour. He was a very pleasant guy and we learned a lot about the Canadian Elks from talking to him. Bill has also joined Jackie’s circle of email jokesters so she is in email contact with him. The Vernon Lodge recently celebrated their 90th anniversary, but the membership is small, less than a hundred members. We were able to get a lodge pin for our banner. Double yea!
On Thursday, the 25th, the weather cleared and we were able to do some serious caching. We were able to find eleven caches and had a real nice tour of the area in the process. We found that most of the farms and orchards are up in the hills outside of town. After our caching we decided to try to get into one of the Royal Canadian Legion posts. This organization is the equivalent of the American Legion in the States. While we had been driving around town the day before we had seen a
building just off the main road which had an old warplane mounted on the roof, an old Spitfire painted in Canadian colors. We had assumed that this was the Legion, however, after finding it again, we learned that it was a different veteran’s organization called the Army, Navy, Air Force Veteran’s Club. (ANAFV for short) The place was open so we went in and when I showed my American Legion membership card they let us in as guests. They had a very large bar/clubroom and were very friendly and welcoming. We had a couple drinks and chatted with a couple people for about an hour. While we were there we asked about the Royal Canadian Legion and they told us that the Legion also had a post, or actually “branch”, located downtown. After we left the ANAF Club we went downtown and located the Legion. Again, we went in, I showed by American Legion card and we were warmly welcomed. We again found the folks there to be very friendly and chatty. We also found that most of the Legion branches had hat pins similar to those we get from Elks lodges. They also have colorful ribbons that they give out to guests. We were able to get a branch pin from the bartender which has been put on our Elks Banner. It seems that not too many Canadian Elks Lodges have bars, so our Elks visitation and pin collections will suffer while in Canada. However, almost every town has an ANAF Club or Canadian Legion, or both, and they all have bars and most have pins! Triple YEA! We can continue to document our travels on our banner.On Friday, June 26th, we left Vernon and headed Northwest for a 60 mile drive to Kamloops, BC. Kamloops, a city of 80,000 is on the Northwest corner of the Okanagan area. Kamloops lies on the Thompson River which is sort of the Northern boundary of the Okanagan. We got to the Kamloops RV Park and found that it was right next door to the BC Wild Animal Park, a small local zoo. The park was small, but we did have full hookups and were able to get our satellite TV. That is an issue I have not mentioned up to now. I had been under the impression that once we got a little bit North of the US border we would have trouble getting our Direct TV satellite reception because the satellite would be too low in the sky. As it turns out, we have had good satellite reception at every park we have been in. We have had clear exposure to the south in each park and the dome has locked in with no problems each time. On Saturday we did some touring of Kamloops and found a very quaint little downtown area. Our Elks list had indicated that the Kamloops Elks had a lounge and
we found the building right in the middle of downtown. Oddly enough (for the benefit of our friends in Indio) also located in the same building was a nightclub called Cactus Jack’s. Anyway, we couldn’t see any signs on the door of the lodge indicating when and if it was open, so we parked the car and I walked up to check. I found the front door open, but no one around. The place also looked very unkempt and disorganized. Then I heard voices coming from upstairs so I went up to check. What I found was four members of the Lodge, including the ER, working to pack stuff up. Turns out that they had sold the building and were moving all their property into storage until they figured out if they were going to get another building. Turns out they had closed the lounge several years before due to lack of participation and the Lodge membership just got too small to support the large building. I chatted with the guys for a little bit and one of them managed to find a lodge pin in one of the boxes he was packing. We probably got one of the last lodge pins ever from the Kamloops Elks Lodge.After our lodge “visit” we did some caching in the area and found six. The total was small because the caches were kind of scattered far and wide. During our travels we found the Kamloops ANAF Vets Club in North Kamloops, on the North side of the Thompson River. The bar was open so we went in for a drink. The place was pretty busy so we couldn’t get a seat at the bar. As a result, we had to sit at a table and didn’t get a chance to really talk to anyone except the bartender. It turns out that the ANAF clubs also have hat pins, so we were able to get a pin from the Kamloops club. We thought about coming back to the club later in the evening for karaoke, but we couldn’t find anywhere close where we wanted to eat, so we got some KFC and went home. The next day, Sunday, we went out and did some more caching, finding six more. During our driving around we stopped at a liquor store because we had to restock our Absolute cabinet. We payed $170 for three 1.75 liter bottles of Absolute, which would have been about $80 in California. Canada taxes the hell out of liquor, even drinks in the private clubs are much pricier than they are at a club in the states. After caching we headed back to downtown Kamloops and the Kamloops Branch of the Royal Canadian Legion. We were again welcomed and were able to get a branch pin and a ribbon for our collection. While we were there we played the BC Provincial lottery, which had a Texas Hold’em type game similar to what we had seen in the Midwest last summer. We also got involved in the weekly “meat draw” which was being held while we were there. We have seen these meat draws advertised in various clubs we have been in for a couple years now, but were never quite sure what it was. Turns out they go to a local market and buy a bunch of packaged meat, then hold a ticket drawing. The tickets were a buck apiece and there were three different draws. We actually won a package of pork chops, which we had for dinner that night. Our first “meat draw”!
Monday, the 29th of June, was our last day in Kamloops and the Okanagan area of British Columbia. We decided to visit the BC Wild Animal Park next door to the RV park before we did our shopping. We had a two for one ticket to the park from the RV park, so it only cost us $12.00 to get in. Turned out to be not much of a zoo. They
had a few animals scattered around, elk, deer, bison, wolves, and a few smaller mammals, but for the most part they only had one or two of each species. The grounds were not really well maintained, but we did spend a fairly enjoyable couple of hours there. They had a little train that went around most of the larger animal’s enclosures so we took the train ride. We did see a week old baby elk which was kind of cool. Most of the animals were sleeping and some you couldn’t find at all because they were in their houses or burrows. The only real active animals were the four wolves, which we watched run around and play for a little while. After visiting the park we got some lunch and did our shopping. We wanted to shop in Kamloops because the next couple of stops on the way North to meet our caravan are going to be in smaller towns.On Tuesday, June 30th, we left Kamloops and drove North 140 miles to a little tiny town called Lac La Hache. Our RV park is actually between Lac La Hache and 100 mile, a slightly larger town. We are now up in the hills about 3,000 feet in the forests. Our trip took us along Highway 97 which is known as the Cariboo Trail. We will be on
97 all the way up through Prince George to Dawson Creek where we pick up the caravan and start the Alaska Highway. Although the park we are in has full hookups with 50 amp and WiFi, it seems like we are in the middle of no where. We are back in the trees and there are not very many other campers. In fact, we were the only ones in the park when we first checked in. I had made reservations because Wednesday, July 1st, is Canada Day, their equivalent of 4th of July for us. It’s a National Holiday in Canada and I thought that the RV parks would be full. I guess we are far enough out in the boonies here that its not that busy. AND - despite all the trees, we still have satellite! After we got settled in we took a brief drive around the area. The actual town of Lac La Hache is on the lake and very small, but the lake and the surrounding area is very pretty. We are here until Friday, then we move another 60 miles North to a place called McLeese Lake.That brings us up to the minute here in beautiful Canada. We have now been here for nearly three weeks and have found Canada to be a wonderful place to visit. In general the people are friendly and courteous, especially so on the roads. The speed limits are slower so folks are more willing to yield the right of way to you and let you in line. The traffic in Vancouver was horrible, but elsewhere it has been pretty light. The countryside is very pretty and we are very much enjoying our visit. Until we blog again, be safe and have fun!
