April This and That

Now that spring is here our pace of life is stepping up quickly again. Even though we've been busy cleaning, servicing and packing our camper van for its upcoming lengthy road trip, we've had a few interesting things happen this month and we've been to a few new places as well.  Here's a sampling of what we've been up to during April....

1. Kettle Valley Rail Trail
Early in the month, the weather forecast called for sunny skies and temperatures of 24C in the BC interior. We were eager to take advantage of the beautiful weather and decided to take our Bromptons (UK folding bicycles) out for a spring spin on the Kettle Valley Rail Trail. This section of the Trans-Canada trail is built on the old railbed of the abandoned Kettle Valley Railway. A great feature is the gentle grade which makes it fantastic for easy hiking and biking through spectacular scenery. The best scenery is near Kelowna, along the section through Myra Canyon, which has eighteen trestles and two tunnels spread along a 12km stretch.

Imagine these wooden trestles with a steam train puffing along them...

The view down to the city of Kelowna and Lake Okanagan spread across the valley floor was amazing.

We hoped that by going early in the season we'd avoid the crowds. Unfortunately it turned out that we were a little too early as large parts of the trail were still snow-covered and thus we were only able to do about one-third of the Myra Canyon section before we had to turn back as we were carrying the bikes through knee-deep snow. Just sitting in the mountain air, with warm sun and a bluebird sky overhead wasn't too hard to take though and we hope to maybe return later in the year to complete the rest of the tour.

We weren't the only creatures out enjoying the sunshine that day...

2. Kelowna and Kamloops
After completing our tour of the Kettle Valley Railway we drove through Kelowna and down the west shore of Lake Okanagan through places with such evocative place names as Peachland and Summerland. The fruit trees were in blossom, but, the dozens of fruit stands which lined the highway were, of course, still closed up. Fresh fruit: peaches, cherries, apricots, apples and more will be on sale from June through September and we can hardly wait to return later in the season to sample just-picked, tree-fresh, BC fruit. There are many wineries in this area and the regimented vineyard fields were already turning green.

After the lush and verdant Okanagan Valley we drove the scenic route back to Vancouver along the Fraser River Valley and through the semi-arid, almost desert-like landscape around Kamloops.

For some scale to this picture, look closely at the very long train running along the shoreline of Kamloops Lake...

Closer to Vancouver the agricultural area around Abbotsford was also a visual delight including this colourful tulip field.

3. Canada Over the Edge
Our winter rental apartment included cable tv which we haven't had for years and we watched way too much of it over the winter. Although it was hard to find anything decent on the 100+ plus channels available, we did enjoy the programming on the local public television station, Knowledge TV. In particular, there was a lengthy series running every week called 'Canada Over the Edge'. This was an ambitious, four year undertaking to document, from the air, Canada's borders along all three oceans and our 49th parallel land border with the USA. It was lovingly shot although it has a weird, dream-like, ethereal quality to it as both visuals, narration and background music seem to be in slow-motion. The landscape takes centre stage, but, occasionally there were sections with land-based touring and interviews. Maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but, we enjoyed it. We were most interested in the aerial views of the Arctic coastline having just sailed the entire length of it ourselves. The episode with the section of coastline between Gjoa Haven and Cambridge Bay was beautiful. Of course, there was the usual 'money shot' of a lone sailboat, sailing peacefully across a flat, blue sea with white sails flying. The camera zoomed in a little closer and we thought, wow, that's a really nice-looking boat. It got in a little closer and surprise, it was us in Gjoa! We remember that particular day in 2014 well. It was one of the very, very few where the sun shone and the water was flat, blue and ice-free. We know where they filmed us, but, we had no idea we'd been filmed and don't remember getting buzzed by any planes or helicopters. They must have had a really good zoom lens. Anyway, it was just a brief moment in the episode, but, it did liven up the program for us. The series can be purchased on dvd from:

http://www.canadaovertheedge.com/


4. A Sad Sight
Living right on the water has been a treat, but, some days the sea brings bad news as well as beauty. Walking back to our apartment along the sea wall one morning we came across crime scene tape blocking off the area in front of our building. We detoured around and once inside the apartment had a birds-eye of a body being retrieved from the shoreline by the Vancouver Police marine unit. In this photo, two divers have just entered the water with a floating stretcher.

The divers swam to shore where they respectfully retrieved the body which had washed ashore against a log. The operation was efficient and quickly dealt with. It appeared to be a well-dressed young man. Nothing was mentioned on the evening news as to who it was, or, what happened. It's probably not that unusual an event in a big waterfront city, but, it still brought home how easily life can be taken away.


5. Follow by Email
Some of you may have noticed a new box just above the Profile on the right side column of the blog labelled 'Follow by Email'. If you put your email address in here and click 'Submit' you should automatically receive an email every time there is something new posted on the blog without having to check.