Fairmont vacation

On Wednesday, June 23, my family took Bryn to the airport and said farewell to her until the end of next June. She's going to be the new director of a preschool in Heliopolis, Egypt. She decided to leave before the date she had to be there by so that she could get used to her surroundings and get some training before the current director, a girl named Ana who I think is from California, left for home. It was sad sending Bryn off, but I know she'll have a great time in Egypt and have tons of pictures and stories to show and tell when she gets back.

Two days later, my dad, Ty and I set out for our annual vacation in Fairmont Hot Springs, BC, a five-hour drive northeast. My mum stayed behind for a few days to look after my grandma who had to go back into the hospital a week after getting out. (She's been having mysterious pains in her abdomen that the doctors can't figure out.) Fairmont was awesome, as usual, except for missing my mum and Bryn. Since there's no Adventist church for at least an hour in any direction, Dad, Tyler and I spent a quiet Sabbath morning and early afternoon having our own church service and making lunch.  Then in the afternoon we went on a hike up the road to the hot springs, spent some time exploring the old Indian baths, and then hiked down a trail back to our villa. Just as we got back to the resort, we noticed three deer-shaped objects lying in a empty building lot between two houses. Ty discounted them as fake deer, but I wasn't convinced and walked closer. Sure enough, they were three quite real and quite unafraid young deer, who got up when I got near them, but just strolled around nibbling plants once they were on their feet. Dad noticed their antlers were still in velvet. It was a nice Sabbath surprise.

Indian bath house

Ty relaxing in the hot spring-fed bath

View across the valley

Deer in velvet

My dad returned to Kelowna on Sunday night to attend a funeral and brought my mum back to Fairmont after it was over on Monday. Throughout the rest of the week, we went boating in nearby Windermere Lake, visited both Fairmont Hot Springs (developed, requires entrance fee) and Lussier Hot Springs (natural hot spring pools beside a glacier-fed river, free), enjoyed the views of the Purcell and Rocky Mountains from our villa porch and had a relaxing family time.

Admiring the Rockies

When our awesome week of vacationing was over, we headed back home where we enjoyed hanging out with my Auntie Sandy (my mum's sister) and two of her kids, Conner and Alex.  They had arrived a few days before from St. Georges, Manitoba and stayed in the Okanagan Valley long enough to visit my grandparents and our family before continuing their journey to the Fraser Valley to see their other set of grandparents/parents-in-law. My dad offered to take them on a boat ride and so this afternoon, about half an hour after unloading our stuff from the truck, we picked them up and headed out to a local lake for a few hours. We were greeted with some strong winds and lots of waves, but we still had a great time with the relatives and a few daring souls even braved the chilly early-summer water.

Enjoying a protected cove

Eating and talking

Wet cousins on a boat

All in all, we had a very enjoyable week of relaxing and then fellowshipping with relatives!

Winter boating

One of my life-long dreams came true today. Our family finally went winter boating. It was everything I'd always dreamed that it would be, except colder. I used to ask my dad every winter if we could take our boat out. I love boating in the summer, sitting in the bow with the warm wind whipping my hair everywhere and drops of water splashing onto my face as the boat rises and falls through the waves. So I thought that boating in the winter must be equally as fun, just quite a bit more chilly. My dad would also respond that our boat barely even worked in the summer and for sure wouldn't be able to start up in the wintertime. Plus I always begged to go winter boating on Okanagan Lake, the biggest lake in the valley, instead of on Woods Lake or Kalamalka Lake, the smaller lakes to the north that we usually visit in the summer. My dad's second excuse was that our little boat was too small to handle the waves on Okanagan Lake. So every year I would ask once more, knowing the typical response. But this year was different. At the very end of the summer my dad finally decided to upgrade our brown and cream (whoever thought those colours worked well together), starting-to-fall-apart, motor-almost-not-working (even after having a new one put on), little boat. Truthfully, I was kind of sad to realize that the boat I had spent a part of nearly every summer of my life in wouldn't be part of our boating experiences anymore. But then my dad let me come with him to decide on a new boat and my twinge of nostalgia disappeared quite rapidly. The boat I endorsed became the new member of the family just before Bryn and I left for college. We were going to help break it in the Sunday morning that we left for school, but the people at the place we bought the boat couldn't get it ready in time for us to pick up on Friday afternoon. The owner said he'd try to get people to work on it on Saturday, but my dad didn't want that, so we spent that last day at home with our good old Canaventure.

So when I asked my dad before coming home for Christmas if we could take the new boat out for a spin during our break, he finally consented. I mean there were no more excuses to not go winter boating. The new boat definitely wasn't falling apart, the motor worked fine and it was big enough to handle any wave that Okanagan Lake could send our way. The night we got home, I asked my dad when we could take the boat out and we agreed upon Sunday, as long as the weather stayed warmer than -5 C and there was no rain. Today met those qualifications. Ty helped my dad get the boat out of the garage and hooked up to the truck. Our friend Nik dropped by to see us as they were doing that and my dad invited him to join us. Having nothing else planned for the afternoon, he readily agreed. We all piled in to the vehicles and drove down to a public launch on the lake. Bryn got in the boat and we handed our stuff to her and then she arranged it while Ty and Nik, being guys, got right in there to help my dad launch the boat. Meanwhile I had a good chat with some mallard ducks crazy enough to be swimming around on Dec. 20 while my mum snapped pictures. After my dad parked the truck and trailer we all piled into the boat and set off for our adventure. The first obstacle was navigating out from shore. It was super shallow by this time of the year so my dad had to make sure to keep the motor enough out of the water so that it wouldn't hit on stuff at the bottom of the lake, but enough in the water to actually make us go forward. He managed it without too much difficulty and then we were truly off. We headed south for a place I've always wanted to see up close, Rattlesnake Island. (OK, so Kelowna is pretty much right in the middle of the lake and then it goes north to a town called Vernon and south to a town called Penticton. The island is about halfway between Kelowna and Penticton.) We stayed close to the eastern shore of the lake. I was absolutely amazed by the calmness of the lake. In my entire life I have never seen it so peaceful and glassy smooth like it was today. Near the edges it was a perfect mirror reflecting the mist-covered mountains and evergreen trees. Just a few minutes into our trip we were all really glad to be dressed in our ski gear and covered in blankets. Even though the temperature was rather warm (around 3 C), the speed of the boat created a fierce wind that found every place possible to get inside our toques, jackets, pants, and gloves to freeze us. We quickly rearranged to make sure the wind stayed outside our clothes and blankets. Bryn soon found a cozy place to hide out underneath the bow cover, which my dad had attached as soon as we got into deeper water. It was great to keep the wind at bay. Pretty much the whole entire trip my mum was snapping pictures. Finally we got to the island and my dad steered us around it. Ty and I agreed that we should come back in the summer and camp there. (He also decided that he is probably going to ask his future wife to marry him there. We'll see if that happens.) Then we headed across the lake to drive on the western side back to Kelowna. My dad drove slower as we passed Deep Creek, one of our favourite spots to go for Sabbath lunch picnics in the summer. By then we were all getting pretty chilly and so we skimmed past Peachland pretty fast and soon could see through the fog and mist enough to see the floating bridge. Then we knew we were close to Kelowna again. Before we got all the way back to our launch site we stopped the boat and took some pictures of the group wearing Santa hats. Finally I was colder than I get when I go skiing and we were all ready to be done our adventure so we motored back in to shore. Ty and Nik held the boat away from the pier while Bryn and I unloaded it and my dad got the truck. Then my mum took some more pictures of us before we ran to jump in the toasty warm truck. Bryn and I decided that guys are really nice to let girls go sit in warm trucks while they do all the hard/cold work. Once the boat was back on the trailer we headed home and took super warm showers. Even after I got out of the shower my feet were still a bit cold. I put on my warmest clothes and wrapped in a cozy blanket after giving my dad a big hug to thank him for the awesome, spectacular day that I'll remember for the rest of my life.