The Okanagan Valley of British Columbia is frequently compared to Napa Valley. My experience was more complex.

The southern part reminded me of Highway 101 coming north toward San Jose about 50 years ago. Busy, two lane, pleasant but windy road, lined with vineyards and orchards, and fruit and produce stands everywhere.

As we approached the central part of the valley near Kelowna, however, smoke from a series of forest fires cast a pallor of smokey, brown pallidness over the sky, the fields, even the normally beautiful lake. Visibility was limited, and what you could see reminded me of nothing so much as the San Fernando Valley on a smoggy day. I am not including any photos from our first two days here (just google “Van Nuys smoggy day photos” and you’ll get the idea).

We were planning to leave yesterday, but the dawn broke clear and blue and I arranged to stay another day. And it was a spectacular day.

The Okanagan is famous for its wines, and the view from Cedar Creek Winery showed why the comparison to Napa Valley was fitting. That is, if Napa had a lake the size of Tahoe next to it:

We spent the afternoon people-watching at a coffee house downtown and walking around Kelowna’s downtown waterfront area where, in the evening, I came upon a free outdoor jazz concert:

A continuing series: What is art? Is this art?

Today, the winds have changed, the smoke is back, it feels like Fresno, and we are out-a-here.

Our daughter Kate (aka Katy, aka Katrina, aka Trina-pop) will appreciate this. The first night on the road we dined at the 125 year old Palace Cafe in Ellensburg. Our delightful server was Katy.

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Breakfast the next day was at a beautifully restored diner, and my server was a lovely young woman named…Kate.

For our next meal we were served by…Katrina. Thought we had a run going until the next day – our server was Jocelyn. I asked “may I call you Kate?” Nope.

I had another run going. Our first dinner in Canada we had a lot of fun with the server and the busser, and they ended up comp’ing our desert.  The next morning I insisted that a young woman go ahead of me in line at Starbuck’s since she was obviously working and I’m obviously retired. Reluctantly she agreed, and then she insisted on buying my latte:

Nicole is a marketing rep for Labatt’s (part of the Budweiser/InBev empire). She was in town to represent Labatt’s at a golf tournament put on by a big restaurant chain in Canada called Earl’s. I told her I used to represent a large Budweiser distributor when I was still in law practice, so we talked about the beer business, and her life in Vancouver, while waiting for our coffees. I was getting spoiled. Every meal since crossing into Canada had involved free stuff.

In her honor, we dined at Earl’s that night. It helps that Earl’s has a spectacular waterfront view of Lake Okanagan.

We had a good time cajoling our server, but alas, no free stuff. The run was over.

We met two other lovely ladies while walking around Kelowna:

“I get that we’re twins and have to dress the same, but do we really have to have same kind of ice cream every time?” I think they were both named Kate, but I’m not sure about that.

Last year we had some issues crossing into Canada. We had stopped at a market on our last stop in the US to load up on California wines before crossing the border. And that was wrong. Being foolishly honest when asked if we had any alcoholic beverages, we were boarded by three armed agents, wearing full body armor. The lead agent took pity on my stupidity and let us off with a warning. Best of all, she did not remove any of our wine for her own collection.

(The return to the US last year was equally adventurous. US Homeland Security, it seems, was really, really concerned about our citrus, and the flawless rack of lamb I had just bought. A team of armed agents escorted us to a waiting area while, for 45 minutes, they removed the contraband lamb, and checked out our collection of CD’s. I sincerely hoped the lamb ended up in one of their fridges, and was disappointed that they did not take the Billy Ray Cyrus album.)

This time we made sure NOT to bring any wine, also no citrus, no lamb. The Canadian customs agent only asked five questions, two of which were “any firearms?” and none of them were about food or alcohol. He asked where we were from and what we were doing in Canada. When we described our trip he asked if there was room for two customs agents to come along (“we’ll share a bed if we have to”), smiled, and waved us on.

Wearing my “True North-Strong and Free” t-shirt, I had queued up Gordon Lightfoot’s Canadian Railroad Trilogy to play as we entered Canada. Seeing no Kevlar vests running after us in the rear-view mirror, we slowly pulled away from the customs gate and I hit “play.” It felt good to be back in the country of my birth. I tried to sing along but I started to tear up and choke on the words. So with watery eyes, and Gordo on the radio, we pressed on through the Okanagan Valley to spend a few days in Kelowna BC.

Toppenish is a small town in central Washington. Like many older rural towns, it has a rich history and fading prospects. But it is fighting back by rebranding itself as the Mural Capital of America. There were scads of paintings on old brick buildings all over town, but this one stood out.

It depicts…well, I’ll let the town tell you:

Walking around town, we saw an unlikely culinary opportunity:

Really wanted to check China-Mex out (Refried Noodles? Kung Pao Tacos?), but we wanted to get to our campground before dark. So off to Ellensburg KOA for our first night.

Mechanical report: everything works! Veterans of last year’s dispatches will appreciate what a rare treasure that is to report.

Accident report: no wrecks, no close calls!

 

OK, this the first and the last “Ferd and Martha Picture” I will post:

Our route will take us up to British Columbia, then all the way to Nova Scotia and the Maritimes, then south through New England and the Atlantic states to Florida, then west along the southern border states to the Southwest, eventually turning right at some point before splashing into the Pacific Ocean, and heading home to PDX.  3 months, 12,000 miles.

Nearby an old codger was fussing with his lawn. I said hi and explained why we were parked in the middle of the street in front of his house (to hook up the Jeep, our tow vehicle) and told him about the trip on which we were about to embark. He seemed bewildered and somewhat gruffly said “Errr, das a lot a driving.” Yeah Dude, no kidding.

When my children were young, we were at a beach house one weekend and I noted they had not yet been to the beach. They were just lying around the living room, playing video games, reading comics, bored. At a beach house! I said “let’s head to the beach.” “Aw Dad, we don’t want to go to the beach,” as they continued to do not much of anything. “Sorry,” I said. “Today is a mandatory fun day. Whether you like it or not, we are going to have fun.” We went to the beach, played Nerf Football, then to a movie, a museum, ice cream, and generally had a wonderful, fun time that each of them remembers to this day.

So it is with this blog. No matter how bad your day is going, when you come here you must have fun. It might be derivative. It might be short-lived. It might only be for a minute or two. But you come here, it’s mandatory fun. Don’t mess up.