Month: November 2016

Penticton life is turning out to be pretty easy … too easy perhaps. Our new temporary home is quite possibly the most comfortable and luxurious place we’ve ever lived (outside of certain short-term stays in Calgary/Beauvais). We eat, we sleep. We take short walks to various stores and around the hills. We watch movies or TV on one of two flat screens.

Internet access is fast. The kitchen is great. And we’re learning to love the hot tub. Oh man, it’s going to be hard to leave 😉

Maxi the Cat, who’s the real boss around here, seems to have fully adopted us as his new staff. And he’s not shy in telling us exactly what he wants, when he wants it. Mornings involve him walking into our bedroom, meowing loudly, pouncing on top of us, swatting at hands or face, and generally making it known it is time for feeding. Throughout the day it’s in-and-out, in-and-out, as he insists. But he’s awfully cute though, so that makes up for it all.

So, in short, we’re enjoying life here in Penticton. And we’re beginning to explore our surroundings. The house is situated near the edge of town, so has a semi-rural feel. We took a walk up the road that goes passed our place. It winds it’s way up the side of the hill/mountain that we’re nestled into, giving us a great view of the whole city with Skaha Lake to the south and Okanagan Lake to the north.

There are vineyards and wineries all over the place here in the Okanagan. On our walk we past by apple orchards, and what looks like a vineyard that produces ice wine. The grape vines were thick with fruit, awaiting that first freeze…

 

… awaiting a freeze that might never come! It’s mid November now, and I don’t think it’s dipped below zero, even overnight. Temperatures have often been hitting mid/high teens. I was worried about not having enough warm winter clothes. Now I’m wishing I’d brought my shorts.

What I’m trying to say is, the weather has been mostly pretty darn nice so far.

P.S. I forgot to include this earlier, but starting in Calgary we finally closed the loop on our inReach travel map. Ann’s been marking our journey via our inReach satellite tracker, but despite my pleading, she refused to start it till after we departed Calgary last year. This left the whole drive across Canada looking incomplete.

Well, thanks to my wise counsel, she recorded our drive across Canada this year. So finally, the map of our journeys that began with our sail through the Great Lakes, and then our motorcycle trip across Canada and around the USA, is complete!

We said a temporary goodbye to Peggy’s place and shifted our stuff over to Donna & Sam’s for a few days of good conversation, relaxation and eating! Donna had planned a turkey dinner for the family (our third!!), so we ate, laughed, and got introduced to some silly iPhone app (snap chat??) that put cartoon mouse ears on my head.

Technology … making the world a sillier place, one mouse-face at a time.

The next day Donna took us to visit Monique and Chris’ place … actually, we went to visit their dog Wally. He’s an extremely  cute, smart, and rambunctious little fur ball. We spent an hour or so being entertained as Donna played with Wally, and attempted to outsmart him when it was time to come in (it was a close match 😉 )

  

After a few days we moved back over to Peggy’s … a real refuge in this crazy Calgary city. It overlooks the green space known as Fish Creek Provincial Park, which is ripe with deer and pheasants that come right up to the window. It’s all very peaceful.

While there Peggy invited all the kids, both young and old , over for another yummy dinner. The following day Phil took the old kids over to Calgary’s new National Music Centre, a place that celebrates Canadian music. Phil, who worked on site for years, gave us the VIP tour, including getting us into places off-limits to mere mortals.

After visiting the centre we went out for dinner, and then went over to Phil’s son’s place to visit Dylan, Chantal and their two cute kids, Theo and Vida.

We spent the last few days in Calgary at Peggy’s place, relaxing and just enjoying our time there.

The day finally came for us to head off towards our new temporary home in Penticton. With winter making a showing, and learning about a major rock slide that was causing delays along our intended route, we decided to leave a day early and break the drive up over two days.

A few hours into the first day we came to the rock slide along the Trans-Canada. If we had arrived a 1/2 hr earlier we probably would have got through quickly, but we arrived just in time for them to begin paving a temporary detour. A wait of three+ hours ensued. Good thing we had lots of time.

 

    

We stopped in Golden for the night , and then made the final push to our new temporary home in the hills of the Okanagan valley. We are house and cat sitting through the winter here, so it was appropriate that the first one to greet us once we arrive was Maxi the Cat. He is an orange tabby, very cute and easy going, but with typical ‘cat’ attitude. He definitely sees us as the latest hired staff ;-).

Leslie and Dave (the permanent cat staff) greeted us warmly and made us feel right at home. It’s fun to meet fellow adventurous spirits. They are retired professionals who are also RVers, ballooners and wine connoisseurs. Their home, which we get to enjoy over the next five months, is comfortable and, by our recent standards, quite luxurious.

   

So now we’re getting to know our new temporary home of Penticton, and enjoying the relaxing time here in this lovely house. Mostly we’re making sure the boss Maxi is well looked after.