A stop in the desert

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Osoyoos, July 25, 2005

We got up early Monday morning and set out for Osoyoos after a quick breakfast of raisin bran. Roberta drove most of the way to Osoyoos, while Katherine knitted. We have been to Osoyoos many times, but always in September or October, and it is one of our favorite places to camp. We always go to the Inkameep campground, which is right on the lake, and we had made a reservation there for this one night. We always had an intuition that Osoyoos would be a zoo during the summer months, and we sure found out what a zoo it is today. There must be nearly 1000 people stuffed like sardines into the 200 or so sites here. Most people are camping in RVs, and it’s condo camping. Add to this a lot of fancy equipment: bikes, water toys, boats, scooters, motor bikes, boom boxes, portable fridges, barbecues, motorized air pumps - and you have a very noisy place. Quite a contrast to what we have experienced here in the fall, when often we are the only people camping outside the section where the permanent RV residents live. We like it better in the fall.

Still, it was a pleasant day in many respects. We both love this desert terrain. The descent into the valley coming in from the west offers a beautiful view of the town and outlying areas. Our campsite was located in the far end of the campground, fairly nearly the lake, and not too crowded by neighboring campers. Once we got settled in, we put up the awning to give us some shade from the brilliant sunshine, enjoyed a couple of swims in the lake during the afternoon, and dined on fresh sweet corn we bought at one of the many fruit and vegetable stands around here. Tomorrow before we set out for home (early, so we beat the rush hour traffic heading into the city in the afternoon) we plan to stop in Keremeos to pick up some fruit and vegetables to take home. We have agreed not to set an alarm but whoever wakes up first will nudge the other to wake up too. We have already taken in the awning, picnic table cloth, clothes line, and folding chairs, so basically all we have to do in the morning is lower the pop top and drive away.

Reflecting on this month of travel, it’s been a wonderful exploratory holiday. We have added two campgrounds to our list of favorite places to stay. Pacific Rim and Osoyoos had already been on our list - and we have tried to make at least one yearly visit to each of them in recent years. We have added Jasper and Bow Valley to this list of places we’d like to come back to many times. And we learned that we want to avoid camping ate Osoyoos during June, July, and August.

It has sometimes been challenging to live in such a confined space together for such an extended period of time. Sometimes we have become irritated with each other. But we have learned that we need to give each other room to do individual things, and not always expect to do everything together. We sometimes wished we had bikes with us on this trip, though we have mixed feelings about hauling them around. They sure would have come in handy, though, in all the campsites we liked the best, and would have given us more opportunity for solo activities.

Osoyoos, despite the chaos this time of year, has been our most pleasant camping day yet during this trip, because it isn’t raining here, there are few or no biting insects, and it was warm enough to sit outside in comfort. Today was the first day since we left home that we have really made good use of our folding chairs and the campsite picnic table! Most places we camped before were either too wet, too cold or too buggy to bother trying to sit outside. Some of this was our choice of location, but some of it was plain poor luck. The first three weeks of our trip, we had a grand total of three sunny days.

By the time we get home tomorrow, we will have been on the road 33 days, and we slept in the camper for all but six nights! I think we may have gotten into a routine now that allows us both to get a good night’s sleep in this small bed, though we do agree that bringing an extra comforter would give us the ability to have one of us sleep up top if someone needs the extra sleeping space occasionally.

We’d also like to bring a BBQ in future. The smells of other campers’ meaty grilled meals was sometimes very enticing. And coming to Osoyoos, it would really be nice to have some floating toys to make swimming more fun. Today would have been a great day to loll about on inner tubes - there was a stiff breeze, which created lots of gentle waves.

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Photos

Approaching Osoyoos from the East
The descent into the Osoyoos is quite spectacular.

Condo camping
Inkameep campground bulges at the seams in the summer months, but the lake was still refreshing.