Kelowna to Revelstoke

10^thSeptember 2019

The weather gods are still against us and it looks like we are in for a day of light rain. Nevertheless we must soldier on and today’s destination is Revelstoke. We took to opportunity to discuss our next few destinations with Lon and Marilyn last night and now approach Revelstoke with some trepidation as it drew a bit of a blank look from both of them as a tourist destination.

Anyway, we had breakfast at our motel entertained by a guy with his leg up on one of those scooters, assuming he had an injured knee or similar. Once in the breakfast room he produced a series of plastic containers that he filled with cereal, filled his drink bottle with milk, then produced a soft cooler pack into which he loaded 6 packs of yoghurt, 3 apples and around 4 or 5 danish pastries. He then packed it all up and left. I don’t think he was a guest!

We were in our car and on our way by 9.30am, driving in light rain. Not long after leaving Kelowna, we entered ‘Lake Country”, and soon Lake Kalamalka came into view. Quite a stunning sight which in bright daylight would have been spectacular. We stopped and took a few photos and motored on through mainly farmland and pastures, with more fruit, a lot of corn and still a few wineries. It is very pleasant scenery to drive through even if the weather is not great.

Lake Kalamalka

Our first major Town was Vernon, located at the Northern end of Lake Kalamalka. It was a pretty unremarkable place named after the founder of the Coldstream Valley where it is located.

Onward through a few other minor towns, including Grindrod (Home of the Annual Garlic Festival according to the signs), we reached Sicamous “The Houseboat Capital of Canada”, Sicamous is located on Mara Lake the other very large lake on our route. After a quick stop to investigate their claims we moved on with Revelstoke now in our sights. The rain is now intermittent and our hopes raise a little.

Houseboats waiting for customers

One of the tourist highlights of Revelstoke, is the Begbie Falls, located quite close to the town. Directions tell us that it is accessible through a narrow gravel road that is not usable by RV’s, but I am sure SUV’s are fine. It is a bit of a voyage of discovery to find the access road, and I can testify that it is narrow, not in great nick and is definitely not for RV’s. Fortunately we only came across one other car on the road, and didn’t have far to reverse back to let them past.

The gravel road access

There is a short, also narrow walk down to the falls which is lush with mosses and anything that grows in an environment that is perpetually wet.

Carole treading warily along the walking track to the falls

Even though it has been pretty dry here, there was plenty of water flowing through. The tourist photos show torrents of water, which I guess would be the case when the snow was melting.

Having ticked off our first tourist highlight, and still remembering the ambivalence of our Canadian friends, we booked into our motel and looked for a quick lunch so we could see the other highlights. Surrounding our accommodation are fast food outlets of all descriptions. We thought we might try Tim Horton’s, but we couldn’t stand the smell in the restaurant, so didn’t hang around to order. Not wanting to waste to much time, we decided to risk McDonalds. Pretty hard to go wrong there you would think. Well, have you ever been to a Maccas that doesn’t serve hamburgers !!! We have now, as it seems the grill was being serviced (hasn’t worked for several days), so all they have is fried chicken, (nothing grilled remember). The restaurant probably had a refurb 15 years ago, but perhaps the grill was not upgraded at the time. Not wanting to waste any more time we had a chicken surprise in a bread roll, not particularly filling but we weren’t going back for more.

Still a little hungry and seriously in need of a good cup of coffee, we drove into Revelstoke City Centre. It is a nice little town, but this place only exists because it is a Ski Resort and right at the moment the Skiing isn’t great. We did find a café that made better coffee than we have experienced so far, and had a light snack with it. A good black coffee is still elusive in Canada.

Downtown Revelstoke

Ready to go again we head off to Mount Revelstoke National Park, to drive up the famous Meadows in the Sky Parkway. It is a 26 km winding road to the summit of Mount Revelstoke with some nice scenery and many hiking trails along the way. The rain, of course, makes hiking a little unattractive, but we are up for a drive to the top to see the famous wildflower meadows (we are a bit late in the season so it is asking a lot). Once at the carpark at the top, you could catch a shuttle bus to the meadows, but we decided that the 1 km walk was probably a better option. It wasn’t too steep, the rain had stopped (momentarily), and just in case there weren’t any wildflowers we might see other things of interest. According to signs everywhere, a grizzly bear had been sighted in the area, and instructions were left on a whiteboard in case you met up with him.

A few of the Magic Mushrooms we saw on our wak

The walk to the "Meadows"

There were very few wildflowers and by the time we got to the top it was raining hard. So we headed for the shuttle bus shelter and caught it back to our car.

As we drove back down the mountain, the rain eased considerably and we were able to stop at a couple of lookouts and get some incredible views of the Columbia river winding its way through this valley.

Last on our tourist checklist, was the Revelstoke Dam, spanning the Columbia River it is one of Canada’s largest Hydroelectricity producers. Sadly we arrived at just before 5pm and the Visitors Centre was closed. It doesn’t open till 11am in the morning, so we will not get a chance to see it in the morning as we will be long gone.

For dinner we wanted something with walking distance. Our motel, The Days Inn Revelstoke has a Steakhouse, so we will give it a go. We walked across at around 6.30pm, it seemed busy for a large restaurant, and to our great surprise there was a waiting list. We didn’t wait that long, had a nice steak and accompaniments that reminded us of the ‘80s.