September 18, 2014

Hike #2:

Bonnie & I decided to take her dog Tia for a walk today.

Since I am starting my hiking blog, I suggested we do the most well known Kelowna trail for our hike. If you thought Greenway- you were right!

We took two cars, and parked mine at Rotary Beach, and then took Bonnie's back to Mission Creek park, near Orchard Park Mall on Springfield Road. It was a very nice day- no weather to deal with.

The 8 km hike to Rotary Beach is flat and level, on a wide well maintained trail. Always a positive sign when you see NO garbage on the trail. The trail runs along Mission Creek the entire length. I commented to Bonnie how amazed I was that there was still a large volume of water in the creek that empties into Okanagan Lake.

I walk this trail a lot, and the volume of water in the Spring is incredible- and for it to continue to flow this heavily this late in the year is amazing. Where does this water come from? I cannot see any snow in the mountains?

The hike is well shaded by the trees lining both sides of the creek. You feel like you are out in the country, until you get to an open area and see golf courses, condos and city roads that you hike under, and then lose sight of city life as you continue the hike.

Ninety minutes later, we got to Rotary Beach, on Okanagan Lake, at Lakeshore Road. We got into my car, and drove to the end of Lakeshore Road, to the Upper Parking lot at Bertram Creek Park. We walked a short distance to a ledge, overlooking Okanagan Lake, with panoramic views of Kelowna, Westbank and Peachland; where we had a picnic.

We could see all the way from Black Mountain to Rattlesnake Point. Directly across from us was Mount Boucherie. We could clearly see the Okanagan Lake Floating bridge, and downtown Kelowna to our right. To our left was West Kelowna and Peachland.

We both commented on how fortunate we were to live in such a beautiful area.

After our picnic we returned to Mission |Creek park, where we off loaded Tia into Bonnie's car, and off to real life of cleaning houses, doing laundry and other mundane chores.

Pedometer readings:

Steps: 11,720
Kms:  8
Time: 90 minutes
Calories burned: 680