More holiday

I started sorting pictures and got a huge number to show you, and had only covered the first third of the holiday. Yikes! So, with minimal commentary, here we go!

Stop number one, Penticton, BC. We saw Grandma Dee, Auntie Mary, Auntie Nancy, Uncle Bot/Bub/Eric, Cousin Su, Uncle John, Auntie Sally, Auntie Sydney, Uncle Bruce.

Several of those people are here, tubing down the channel between the two lakes in Penticton.



Elaine wasn't keen about the whole idea, until she saw how it worked, so there was a second expedition the next day! Some lucky dude gets the job of driving the old school bus down to the stopping point, about an hour away by tube, throwing the tubes up on top and driving the slightly damp people back to the starting point. Many people have their own floating things (Jeez, floating sofa beds, some of them, complete with bar fridges) and so their fun is completely free. One can speed up or slow down a bit, with a lot of paddling, but basically you just go with the flow!

Long, long ago, Stephen had a job at the little college here, which was in a dumpy building behind this church. Now it has moved, but we had to go see the old landmark, and were rewarded with this sign. Why go to church? Well, we have short sermons and air conditioning!


On the beach is the peach! Apparently the original old peach was rolled into the lake one night when the town got too exciting, after an MC Hammer show! Lucky for us they built a new one, and they serve delicious peach drink.

Above the town is Munson Mountain, where you get a great view over the northern lake and the town. On the side of the mountain is the word "Penticton" spelled out in white stones. Hollywood of the north... Kind of dry, isn't it?


One day we took a ride on the Kettle Valley railroad. We always like a good steam train, but this time we got a full-size locomotive, which was quite a treat!


Vineyards seen from the train. This whole area has traditionally grown loads of fruit: apples, peaches, plums, cherries, pears... anything! But it seems that lately grapes have taken over, and the place is full of vineyards and wineries. This is fine, but really, an apple is often more useful than a bottle of wine, and who knows how the economics of this will all work out!

After the train ride, we stopped off at the Dirty Laundry, and liked their story, their graphics and their wine.

The name comes from local history: there was a laundry in town whose owner decided the guys working on the railroad needed a little entertainment, so he opened a brothel upstairs in the same building. Har har. It gives them a reason for calling their wine lots of suggestive names and putting little Mae West quotes on their ads.

This is a bottle of their Bordello wine. It comes with a magnifying glass so you can inspect the details of the "wallpaper" label! Award-winning design, apparently, as well as wine. We are hoarding this for a while, so I can't tell you much about the wine, except that when we tasted it we liked it enough to shell out the bucks for it.

And now some arty shots of rust!

An old tractor seat.

A coil of metal, and some moss, and some spikes and shadows...

I was lucky enough to find a big old boiler with a brand name on it that included all our initials. I'm not sure what to do with our rusty letters, but here is mine!

As we left Penticton and headed east, we left the dry landscape and got more greenery, more pines, more ranching.

We arrived in Castlegar, where we saw Auntie Diane, Uncle Rolf, Grandma Betty, Grandpa Jan!


Stay tuned! I'm not sure how many pics of stop two I have, but stop three was Banff, and we found it necessary to take a picture of every dang mountain!