From the Prairies to the Orchards
I left Calgary on the morning of June 12th and am now in Kelowna for 4 days visiting a sister and her hubby, my parents, and a friend from high school.
My first stop was Cochrane, which not that many years ago looked like the cattle ranching and petroleum centre it was. Now, although scenes from those days are still easy to find (the first photo show cattle in front of a natural gas processing plant), the 2nd photo below shows you modern Cochrane, with homes of all types being built by the hundreds.
Back into the Rockies! I got off the 4-lane as soon as possible, over to the quiet 2-lane Highway 1A where I could enjoy my surroundings.
I spent 40 minutes or so hiking up the lower falls in Johnson Canyon – I really wanted to keep going to the much higher upper falls, but there was just no time. The steel and concrete catwalk bolted into the canyon walls here is very impressive – I imagine that this place is extremely crowded in the summer!
“If you’ve seen one mountain you’ve seen them all.” I don’t think so! 🙂
There’s a lot of highway construction going on. The police were using this 20km-long section near Golden as a fund-raising project, with their radar bringing in a large number of double fines for speeding in a construction zone. No, my beer money is intact!
I stopped in Revelstoke for a short visit and dinner with my next older brother and his family, then continued on to Kelowna (Westbank, actually), arriving just before 10 p.m. As you can see from the photos, the weather wasn’t great, but it was a very good day regardless. My odometer now shows that I’ve travelled 3,152 km (1,970 miles) so far – that should be about halfway.
May 14, 2009: My Kelowna View
I woke up to rain this morning, which I used to hate when lived in Vancouver. Now I rather like it because I see it so seldom. The sun is coming out as I type this, but look at the view from my parent’s deck – that’s snow low on the mountains!
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