A wedding trip to Kelowna, BC
Cathy and I returned yesterday from a 5-day trip to Kelowna for my daughter’s wedding. I’ll just talk about family stuff briefly – as usual, this post is mostly about the experience of travel.
We flew from Whitehorse to Kelowna (via Vancouver) on an Air North Boeing 737 Thursday evening. I love this view as we lined up for takeoff at YXY – another Adventure begins!
A view of the Mount Sima ski hill (and summer adventure park) as we climbed out. To the left of it you can see the Coal Lake road climbing into the high country.
We were into clouds within a few minutes, as expected, and the ground stayed hidden almost all the way to Vancouver. At 7:00, though, we got to see the coast north of Sechelt as we descended.
Seconds from landing at YVR, at 7:16.
We dropped off some passengers and picked some up, and at 8:07 were at the threshold of the runway with this view to the west, ready for takeoff for the short hop to Kelowna as the sun set.
The Fraser River, with New Westminster on the near side and Surrey on the other. Seconds later, we were in the clouds again. Almost 50 years ago, I lived just to the right of the distant bridge, the Port Mann.
On Friday, Cathy and my Dad and I met my daughter, Andrea, her husband-to-be, Jason, and their 4 kids, at Kangaroo Creek Farm, where I got some wallaby love 🙂
And my soon-to-be-grandson Nicholas got to chat with a parrot.
Later on Friday, I met the kids at Sanctuary Gardens in West Kelowna for the wedding rehearsal. What a beautiful location to get married!
The Marriage Commissioner, Maureen Taylor, was wonderful to work with. Although she was doing 7 weddings this extended weekend and had just come from one of them, there was no rush.
We had a well-dressed spectator for much of the rehearsal 🙂
Saturday was family get-together time, with about 30 people, including Andrea’s Mom and her husband from Australia, and one of my sisters and her husband from California. I took my grandson away from the noise for a while, and my son joined us (as did Cathy, with my camera).
The wedding was on Sunday afternoon, and throughout the day, the weather gave no solid indication of whether it was going to cooperate or not (a misty rain quit literally seconds before Andrea and I started walking towards the gazebo). The “aisle” down to the gazebo is quite long, but didn’t seem that way with Andrea holding my arm.
It was a beautiful ceremony, and the location made it perfect. Cathy was quite incredulous that I went for a day without a camera, but there were professional photographers so I didn’t need to be one, and there are many hundreds of photos being shared by guests, including the next two by my sister, Tracy,
Andrea’s side of the wedding party, with her brother and family, her Mom and husband, and Cathy and I on the right.
Monday was rather a blur of family chatting and good-byes. Most people left that day, but Cathy and I had a 07:00 flight on Tuesday. We had to fly Westjet home (through Vancouver again), or wait 2 more days for Air North’s next flight. As we boarded the plane in Vancouver, it was raining quite hard, and though the First Officer said not to count on getting any photos due to the weather, I got my seat switched to a window anyway.
The clouds started to clear about 45 minutes south of Whitehorse, and with the recent rains, visibility got very good. That’s the Samotua River in the foreground, and Tatsamenie Lake to the right. I had seen an extremely interesting road just before I shot this photo, but a bit of research shows that it was a 30-year old bulldozer track to a gold claim, reached by a winter road from Telegraph Creek, 75 miles away.
The Llewellyn Glacier, one of 53 outlet glaciers that flow from the massive Juneau Icefield, flows into Atlin Lake. It has been receding rapidly over the past 20 years, and there have been some dramatic changes recently.
Those few people in the Yukon with boats can explore the never-ending reaches of Tagish Lake (see map) pretty much forever.
The village of Carcross is in the centre foreground, with Lake Bennett stretching beyond. The main lake goes off to the left, while the West Arm is straight ahead.
We made a very long approach to land at Whitehorse. This is the Yukon River flowing into Lake Laberge. Actually, the entire flight path was quite different than the one we normally fly with Air North.
The new Whistle Bend area is slowly but surely filling in.
One last shot, of the old Air North hangar, which is used for the Hawker Siddeley part of the fleet now.
While the 04:30 wakeup call was tough, it was great to be home before 1:00 pm, with lots of time to chill out before getting back to reality this morning. One of the bottles of wine Cathy picked up from several wineries was perfect to relax with as we talked about this very special, very emotional trip.
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