Road Trip - Summerland

This morning we accidentally slept in and had a late breakfast on our very sloped picnic table. It was really windy last night (not good news for the efforts to control the wildfires), so I kept being woken up by the trees creaking and the tent suddenly flapping around. Happily, everyone else at the campground had already woken up, showered, and left for the day's activities, so there weren't any queues in the bathrooms.

We drove into Summerland, found a cafe with iced coffee, and made use of their power and Wi-Fi to write a little more on the blog. The weather is not as bad as yesterday, but the forecast is still for 30-degrees. Apparently one of the major wildfires on Mount Eneas (just over the hill from us) is burning itself out, so we're not in much danger of evacuation.

We headed to the Kettle Valley Railway station, to have a ride on one of the last remaining steam trains left from the Canadian Pacific Railway. The train runs on a section of track through the Kettle Valley which was built between 1910 and 1916. The railroad used to be 500km long, running between Midway and Merritt, but because of progress in road and air transport along with the cost of maintaining a railroad, it fell into disuse after 1989. Most of the rails were torn up a few years later, but the track running through Summerland in the Okanagan Valley was saved by a charitable society set up by local residents.

We rode in an open-air car for about 40 minutes, down the hill to the 73m tall Trout Creek Trestle. Along the way, a fellow playing the banjo walked down the train asking people where they were from and then singing a song from their home country. He knew Po Kare Kare Ana better than we did! The train stopped for 10 - 15 minutes at the bridge, and we got off and bought some fresh raspberries and blackberries from a stall that a local orchard had set up. They were ultra fresh and super delicious.

The locomotive repositioned itself from one end of the train to the other, and then pulled us back up the hill for another 40 minutes or so. We chatted with one of the volunteers looking after our carriage who was really interested in our trip, and about New Zealand.

After the train ride, we headed into Penticton to get some lunch, where found a pizza and some beer at a local brewery called Bad Tattoo. We walked along Penticton's main streets, wondering where all the people were! You'd think that a lakeside city like this would be teeming with people on a Friday afternoon, but perhaps we just got the timing wrong. We got a crappy milkshake (just soft serve in a cup) from the famous Peach Ice-Cream stand, and while we were walking along the beach came across a cat on a leash who was taking himself for a walk.

Back at the camp, a new group had moved in next to us. It was quite frustrating, as even though the rest of our section of the campground was empty, they'd squeezed our three groups in right next to each other. Maybe they just book the sites sequentially, instead of spreading people out? The new people played loud pop hits from the early 2000's from their truck while we cooked and ate dinner. Weird.