We start the day with a laugh. The Vancouver breakfast program is interviewing Mark Wahlberg, due to the release of Ted 2 this weekend. There is some banter between the presenters and the entertainment guy remarks “this is just the sort of movie you may want to get liquored up before seeing”. My travel companion and I look at each other in disbelief. We head down to the lobby for the free breakfast. A reasonable selection, with a waffle making device to make your own. The first task is to dispense the viscous batter from a hopper into the measuring cup provided. This is not as easy as it may sound. When the tap is opened a trickle flows out of the spout, but shortly after, when air returns up the pipe a significant dollop of batter emerges. This I did not expect, and as a consequence there is batter over my hand and an area around the dispensing station. I attempt to clean up, but the batter is hardening on my hand, and as I wipe up under the dispenser the only thing I achieve is to coat the stainless steel surface with a film of drying batter. Anyway, with my measure now filled to to the brim with batter I tip it in to the waffle iron and shut the lid. Immediately an alarm sounds. I am frantically trying to read the instructions when an elderly gentleman advises that as soon as I fill the iron, I need to rotate the device to enable the batter to spread and cook. All is now well and three minutes later I present my waffle to my travel companion with a sense of achievement and pride. My waffle next, and wary of the perils of the dispenser I open the tap gently. I stop the flow early. I fill the waffle iron and turn the device, avoiding the alarm. I wait the required three minutes and open up the iron, only to find that I have a waffle that is less than complete. Where there should be waffle there is a void. Next time I use a machine like this I will have to make sure that my measure is full.
After breakfast we load up the car and set off, we take a detour to make a visit to WalMart to buy a few bits to bring home, Aunt Jemima products, and a small crate of a dozen bottles of water for the car. The temperatures are rising, and the forecasts are for highs of greater than 30° over the next few days.
We return to the highway, and Sally SatNav announces “in 100 metres turn left”. I turn left at 50 metres. We are now heading north instead of south, and Sally is now adding an hour to our journey and advising a right turn in thirty kilometres. We are on the motorway, there is no available turn. My fellow traveller is trying to determine where we are being directed to. Suddenly the penny drops, we are having to double back, but the first available opportunity is a long way away. About forty-five minutes later we pass WalMart, and the junction where we should have joined earlier.
Onward now toward Kelowna and the Okanagan Lake, our stop for the next two days. The road is good, but the climb is long and arduous. The car has the cruise control set, but from time to time there is a disturbing noise as the automatic gearbox changes down to maintain speed in the climb. My companion is a little worried by the noises. We recall the first time we drove this side of the Atlantic and had a hire car that could not climb a hill and have the air conditioning on at the same time. As we are not suffering this on this journey we must consider it progress.
On our journeys over the past few days we have been spotting timber lorries “there is a timber lorry”. Today my fellow traveller has taken to photographing some of them. We note the different types of logs being hauled.
We also have spotted heaps of saw dust around the landscape; on farms, along the rail tracks, garden centres and outside houses. It has amazed us the quantity of timber that is in evidence in British Columbia, first noted from the air when we arrived in Vancouver with the logs floating in rafts on the Fraser River.
We arrive in Kelowna before our check in time despite the delay at the start of the journey, and we make a detour to the city centre. We first visit an art gallery where there is an exhibition “A Story of Canadian Art”. Two expressionist paintings of mountains catch my eye. We lunch at Starbucks shortly after and then make our way along the east side of Okanagan Lake and relax for a couple of hours at the Gyro Park next to the Lake. Afterwards we top at a shopping mall to get some fresh fruit. Looking for a bottle of wine I pop into a shop that has wine in the sign outside. I open the door and am greeted by a heavy smell of yeast and see shelf upon shelf of large demijohn bottles fermenting away. I get into conversation with the owner. The concern that he runs makes wine to order for his customers. If you want a wine made with grape juice from a vineyard in France, and flavoured with Canadian maple syrup then this is where you go. They can give you an oak or barbeque flavour, flowers and spice, basically any flavour you could think of he could probably do. I find my companion and call her into the shop to share the experience, we talk to the owner some more and then love on.
We shortly arrive at our home for the next two days, Lakeshore Bed and Breakfast.