Smoky Mountain trip to the Kootenays

Or, A brief travelogue.

Last week I went to Kootenay Lake with my youngest daughter and her friend. I met up with my sister and brother in law from California, and my eldest brother lives there. It was a quiet time, a low key, relaxing time. We swam, we saw a few sights, read a few books, ate a lot of food, we hugged, we schmoozed, everybody went home happy. It was good.

It was also a little preview, a little insight, into what nuclear winter might be like.

There were forest fires burning all over the province and in Washington State. That meant that last week, there was a lot of smoke in the air, all the way from the Fraser Valley to Balfour and no doubt beyond. It was over all the summits on Highway 3 and in all the valleys.

The forecast for our week was really hot bright sunny weather, which is perfect for the lake. It's especially perfect for lakes like Kootenay, where getting into the water represents...well, a commitment, even on the hottest days. Remind me to expound on the phenomenon of kids' relative immunity to cold water one of these days.

Got out of the car to get food and gas in Osoyoos about 1:30 in the afternoon. I went back into the car to get my hoodie. Keep in mind Osoyoos is Canada's only real desert. This is what it looked like, on a day that was actually blazing sunshine:

So, it was a little chillier than I expected. Actually, I had expected to roast, not put on a layer.  Basically, that was the story of the week: weird light and low temperatures, because the sun couldn't penetrate all that smoke. The smell was like living within 8 feet of a campfire, except without the heat and only the smell.

Here's what morning on the deck at our cabin usually looks like:

And here's the brightest morning of the week last week. On this same morning, about 10 minutes after this,  my sister got a shot of the lake that includes both the orange sun and the light on the lighthouse across the way, because that 60-watt bulb or whatever it uses is the next brightest thing in the scene:

This isn't late afternoon sunset, it's the middle of the day, just after lunch:

Here's what the Riondel public beach view was like....I suspect in the next year or two there will be a lot of mystic-looking scenery shots like this, no horizons, coming out of the Kootenays and the rest of the province:

This view is from the old lighthouse at Pilot Bay, looking back across the main lake towards Balfour, which is where those low, shadowy land masses are. Look carefully, they ARE there. It's a distance of about a mile and a half west from the lighthouse to that land. The Pilot Bay lighthouse was originally lit with an oil lamp that was visible for roughly 30 miles north and south.

Here's another odd shot: the girls are in the water at 8:30 pm, and that's the moon up there, not the sun. I don't know how to describe this light.

That's pretty much it, folks. I saw some wildlife I've never seen before on this trip: wild turkeys at South Slocan City, and quail (quail!  with those silly little doinkers on the tops of their heads and everything!) just outside Greenwood. I also saw some people at the side of the road wondering what to do with a dead bear cub they'd just hit - another thing I've never seen before, a bear hit by a car. There seemed to be more than the usual number of birds hit by cars, too - hawks and ducks for sure, maybe an owl.

...finally, for you nerds in the crowd and because I was already bored by the time we made the Paulson summit, here's a picture of the bag of taco chips riding shotgun at the top of the summit:

...and here's that same bag when we got down to Christina Lake (which I could at least see from the highway on the return trip):

...your Grade 8 physics teacher can point out the difference if you're missing it.

Speaking of missing it, on the return trip, the primary concern was whether to go back via Highway 3 the whole way or not, given that Grand Forks was on evacuation alert due to the Stickpin Fire just over the border in Washington. If the highway got closed, it would have been a long detour back to South Slocan City, north to Revelstoke, and down to the coast via Highways 1 and 5. We elected to take the chance, had no worries at Grand Forks, and then got as far as entering Abbotsford by the time we ran into that big windstorm. I'm sorry I was driving, and couldn't get any pictures, because there was a lot to see in the two hours it took to get from Abbotsford to North Vancouver. I can say I have a much better idea what my bike rack's speed limit is - about 200 kmh. The bike was trying pretty hard to get off the rack, because we were travelling about 100 kmh directly into winds of about the same magnitude coming at us.