Knox Mtn. & Westside Rd.

Jonathan and I played Racko this morning as we ate breakfast and backed up the stuff on my computer onto my external hard drive.  Then in the afternoon, I showed Jonathan the downtown area of Kelowna from the best vantage point, Knox Mountain.  I hadn't been up there for probably a few years and we stopped at the first lookout so I could point out some of the most notable places.  I made sure to show Jonathan the monster on Black Mountain across the valley, a figure my dad has pointed out to us kids whenever we're driving around town and can see the shape made by a combination of the dry bare patches of mountainside and the sporadic forests.  We took pictures of the mountain monster and then returned to the car, me reading all the information signs as we walked back to the parking lot.  They were full of interesting trivia about the area.  Some of it was stuff I already knew, but most of it was new information to me.

Then we drove to the top of the mountain, parked again and hiked up to the lookout at the peak.  From there most of the same things were visible, but we also had a pretty good view of Okanagan Lake and the area across the lake.  From up there, Jonathan saw a road running right along the lake and said he thought it looked like a really fun road to drive on.  So I told him that it went all down the westside of the lake and if he wanted, we could drive south on it all the way to Vernon and then come back on the highway, essentially make a huge loop.  I said I'd heard about the drive, but never done it myself so we decided to try it out.  We headed back to our car, drove down the mountain, through downtown and over the bridge before turning off onto Westside Rd.

It was a lovely afternoon drive, although a tad scary at some points because of sheer dropoffs on my side of the car, straight down to the lake.  Just a bit after a passing a provincial park that my family has gone to quite a bit, we saw something in the road ahead and slowed down, trying to identify it.  As we drove closer, we both realized it was a bear, which shocked me because, although I've heard about bears coming into orchards at the edges of town, I have never seen one on a paved road in the valley before, only up on logging roads in the mountains.  We slowed to a crawl and Jonathan put the hazard lights on while I grabbed my camera and tried to get pictures of the bear, who was ambling along eating roadside berries and greens.  My camera was being annoying and not taking light enough pictures, so I was going to try taking a few on Jonathan's phone, but then we got too close to the furry brown bear and he scooted off the road and into the weeds and woods down the slope.  When we were sure he had left for good and we wouldn't be getting any more pictures of him, we continued on and soon we were in territory I had never driven through before.

When we came to a new little community of condos and townhouses, we drove into one of the gated summer house neighbourhoods and explored the area and a little later, when we got to the small town of Fintry, we drove down to the lakeside and looked at a provincial park near the water.  After that we drove to the end of Westside Rd.  I was confused as to where we were for a bit until I saw a place I recognized, a historic ranch turned into a tourist stop called O'Keefe Ranch.  Then I knew exactly where we were and directed Jonathan into Vernon where we explored some other roads west of town that I hadn't been on.  They were fun to drive on and there were tons of orchards everywhere that were really pretty.  Finally we figured out how to get back over to the town centre, where we stopped at A&W's for French fries and root beer floats.  I mentioned a place I wanted to take Jonathan and so we decided to take our food there to eat.

We drove to the northeast part of town to Kalamalka Lake and parked at a beach.  Then we walked to the end of a long dock with our food and ate there.  A whole hockey team, wearing their jerseys, was celebrating at the beach and I recognized the logo on their jerseys, the Vernon Vipers, a BCHL team who, apparently by the looks of their large trophy, had just won the league's championship title.  While we ate a loon swam the waters of the lake and we watched it until it dove and disappeared.  By then the sun was starting to go down, so we got back in the car, turned up the heat since it was getting chilly, and headed back to Kelowna, taking a few other scenic roads so I could show Jonathan some more of the valley and he could have some more fun driving.  And that's our adventure for today.