September 23 update

September 23 blog update

 

September 15 ; We spent the day at the Similkameen Sizzle Pepper Harvest Festival in Keremeos. The afternoon event was at Memorial Park. The day started at noon with a chili cook off. We had a sample of each of the 5 entries, then voted for best chili and best decorated booth. We watched a cooking demonstration by the executive chef of one of the more upscale restaurants in Penticton. After his cooking demonstration we ate a few large samples of his creation, a pasta, shrimp, and pepper dish. It was very good. We listened to a zydeco band for awhile, then joined some neighbours of ours from Riverside RV Park Resort for a beer at the legion. I don't know why they wanted to go to the local grungy legion when there was a beer garden set up in Memorial Park, with a zydeco band playing in the park. Oh, well.

In the evening we went to Victory Hall for the Similkameen Sizzle Dinner and Dance. Dinner was a pig roast buffet. The pig had been roasting on a barbecue in Memorial Park all afternoon. Obviously, I had to opt for the vegetarian chili alternative to the roast pig. I can't digest pork. Dinner was a bit pedestrian, but, hey ... this is Keremeos. After dinner the zydeco band that had played in the afternoon played in Victory Hall. It was terrible. Not the band's fault. Their "sound man" was an amateur, and an idiot. Despite numerous complaints, including two from me, he kept the sound at such a loud volume that not only was conversation impossible, the sounds from the different instruments and vocals just morphed into a lot of garbled noise. Before the end of the first of their three sets, about three quarters of the people had left. Us included !

Vicki is doing fine. She has rapidly evolved into a little baby princess cat. When we're in bed, she sleeps on Joanne's chest. When we're not in bed, she spends most of her time snuggled under the covers propped up against Joanne's pillows. Still no takers for adopting her. Wish us luck !

 

September 18 ; Say goodbye to Vicki. This morning we drove to Penticton and took Vicki to the B.C. SPCA animal shelter. I'm very ... disheartened, I guess. She really captured my heart. And for the first time in about 20 years, we were unsuccessful at finding a home for an animal that we rescued. I feel ... like a failure ... as regards Vicki. For the 14 years that we were in the pet foods and supplies business, it was relatively easy to find homes for rescued animals through our stores. And we even managed to find a home for Rain, the stray cat we rescued in Livingston, Texas a couple of years ago. But, alas, not for Vicki < huge, sad sigh >. Well, it's a small consolation that the brand new animal shelter of the Penticton branch of the B.C. SPCA is a very nice place. Whether she is adopted to a new home, or ultimately has to be euthanized there due to cat overpopulation in the shelter < another huge, sad sigh >, she will live happily while there, I'm sure. Their cat adoption facility is 2 large communal cat living "rooms", furnished with a bunch of over stuffed sofas and chairs, lots of tall scratching posts, lots of sunny windows with ledges, and an outdoor screened, shaded area, furnished the same as the indoor areas. The nicest cat adoption facility I've ever seen. I expected her to have to live in a cage, becoming increasingly more stressed until she becomes "cage crazy" and has to be euthanized because she becomes unadoptable. A common problem in cat shelters. But as nice as the facility was, it broke my heart a bit to have to leave here there. Goodbye and good luck, sweet little baby cat. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to do more for you. At least I prevented her from becoming a coyote snack.

We ran errands in Penticton, then I went flying while Joanne completed our shopping errands. I flew from Penticton to Oliver, landed, took off, and flew back to Penticton. Upon take off from Oliver, I had to climb at maximum rate of climb to 4000 feet to clear the mountains in front of me, to return to Penticton. Flying into and out of Oliver's short field, surrounded by mountains, is quite challenging. And the weather was deteriorating rapidly, so I had to do just a teensy bit of "scud running" in the mountains. WOO-HOO !

This evening our new Escapee friends from Colorado, Tom and Marion, came to visit us, and stay overnight. We had dinner with them in our trailer, then visited all evening. Our lot is big enough that there was no problem parking their 40 foot diesel pusher motorhome on our lot, still with plenty of room for our picnic table between our trailer and their motorhome, even with their living room slide extended. And still had room to park Lanoire.

 

September 19 ; This morning we loaded Tom and Marion into Lanoire and set off for a 4 wheel drive adventure driving up Nickel Plate Mine Road, up the back side of Apex Mountain. This is about the fourth time we've done that this summer. It's become my favourite local "thing to do" when we have visitors. The scenery is spectacular.

When we came down off Nickel Plate Mine Road we headed for Forbidden Fruit Winery, on Hwy. 3 on the other side of Keremeos, just past Cawston. Forbidden Fruit Winery is a small "Mom & Pop" winery, as are most of the wineries in the Okanagan Similkameen region. They grow all their own organic fruits, and produce handcrafted fruit wines. Their wines are superb ! Especially their dessert ice wines ! We sampled some of their wines in their tasting room. Then we went over to their "shed" to see the plum pitting operation. They were pitting plums for their first attempt at making a plum wine. When we walked into the shed we were surprised to see that the plum pitting process was done by hand. Five people painstakingly pitting plums. It was going to be about 2 days of work for 5 people to pit enough plums to make their first batch of plum wine, about 1000 bottles.

We had a wonderful picnic lunch, prepared by Marion, sitting at a picnic table on the edge of the orchard, on the banks of the Similkameen River, on a sunny day, each of us with a chilled glass of Forbidden Fruit wine. Tom had a glass of CHERYSH, a blush cherry wine, Marion had a glass of ADAM'S APPLE, an off dry white apple wine, Joanne had a glass of PEARSUASION, a dry white pear wine, and I had my favourite, POMME DESIREE, "a delicate sweet iced wine made from fall apples with aromas and flavours of caramel, cotton candy, and lavender". Are you salivating yet ? A picnic at Forbidden Fruit Winery is now going to be added to my list of favourite local "things to do" when we have visitors.

After lunch, Tom and Marion bought a couple of bottles of Forbidden Fruit wines, we drove back to Riverside RV Park Resort, and they left, headed west for Hope then on to Vancouver before heading back to Colorado.

September 22 ; Well ... my sentiment for today was ... HUH ? ! ?

We spent the day at the annual open house of the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory at White Lake, up in the mountains, in the middle of nowhere, between Keremeos and Oliver. What an odd place for 50 scientists to be working. It was certainly an interesting day, although there wasn't much about the place that I comprehended. Our next door neighbour, Stu, came along with us.

DSK