In the spirit of not spending a ton of money on this trip as I just bought a new camper; we opted to do something that doesn't cost money! Walking!
I googled "hike" and found Myra Canyon Trestles and Crawford Falls both didn't seem to be too long so we decided we would try it out!
First on the list Myra Canyon Trestle bridges. Remember what I said a few posts ago about Google maps misleading us? I believe it was in .excation part 7
Well that may have happened again. In all fairness Google was leading us to the destination I had entered. Plus we learned that Martha is able to handle hills (and paths) a lot better then we figured she could!
Once again we were driving along and all of a sudden Google told us to turn right. From what I could see there was no turn, so we turned around and came back, then we saw this---
Doesn't look like much of a road hey? That's because it's not. It's a trail, most likely meant for ATV's and Horse's.
Fun fact! If you google map Kelowna to Myra-Bellevue Provincial Park it will literally map you to the center of the park. Google thinks it's a road, when clearly it is not.
Well, what's an adventure without a little bit of mystery? So we proceeded. The gravel path quickly turned to a very bumpy grass road. The first bump hit hard!! All of the cabinet doors burst open and I heard a very loud smash. Some of the cabinet doors have mirrors on them so I assumed it was just one of them breaking. Easy fix-- so we carried on. Not without taking a video first mom and dad wouldn't believe us if there wasn't video evidence.
The trail smoothed out, and then immediately began to get narrower. At this exact moment 3 dogs came running directly for us.
****I have a pet peeve, people who don't leash their animals. Currently I was the one in a big camper van on a walking path, so I won't complain about people who don't leash their dogs.****
I also have a crippling fear of animals getting ran over by vehicles. So I immediately stopped the van and made the executive decision that we needed to turn around. Just then two graceful (old) women came down the path on horseback. The puzzled look on their faces only reaffirmed my decision that we needed to turn around. They came to the window to ask what we were doing and why we were up there in a van. After giving us directions to get to the trestle bridge parking they began to tell us horror stories about people on the news who had driven off cliffs because they were following google maps/GPS systems. Old people 🙄
Once their (unleashed) dogs were clear from my wheels we inched forward and began to make an Austin Powers 3 point turn. We were turned around we headed to try to find these dang trestle bridges, when all of a sudden the dogs reappeared. I slammed on the breaks and heard the glass sliding in the back. M turned around to look, turned out the loud smash we had heard was actually the microwave plate. We hadn't noticed that it could have been the microwave because when we turned around to assess what may have broke the door was already closed!
Anyways we finally found our way up to the trestles and walked to the first two! The views were amazing, I'd like to one day come back and do it again. Maybe on a bike next time though, the whole path is about 12km one way!! Too much to walk. Plus I have a sissy sister who did not enjoy walking across the bridge, she is a scared cat! (Love you M, I don't mind your sissyness)
Off to Canyon Waterfalls we went! It was close by and seemed to be an easy hike with a pretty view of the waterfalls! Google led us through a very residential looking area.. I was confused, and maybe slightly frustrated with the incompetency of Google today.
Turns out that the waterfalls are in this field beside a ritzy neighborhood.
I guess I should have read the reviews on this "hike" because you essentially have to scale the side of the hill to get down to it. So we admired it from above and strolled back to the van.
Our feet were absolutely filthy and we needed some supplies for the van (like a new microwave plate) so we went to town. Here's a few pictures we took while messing around in Homesense and Dollarama!
By this point we were so exhausted and just wanted to get to a beach! We found this really great campsite right on Okanagan Lake called "Princess RV park" we had a beach front campsite for the night!
We got to enjoy maybe half an hour of swimming before a huge storm rolled in! What better way to wait out a rain storm then taking a nice hot shower?! We finished off the night by playing "Speed" and listening to the storm roar outside.
There's something so comforting about NOT being in a tent sometimes! Every once and a while on this trip M and I would turn to each other and say "Hey, you know what?? We're not in a tent, we are in this sweet camper van!"
Not to say that I don't still love tenting, but it feels much better to fall asleep listening to the storm outside instead of fighting the storm from inside a tent! We climbed in bed and listened to the storm run wild outside. It was the biggest storm I have seen in a while and I loved every second of it!
