5C's Que Pasa

Our lake continues to recede, we gained yet another step to our beach.  Hard to see beneath the murky water but I believe we have just one more step to uncover and then we are back to beach level.  Meanwhile both Okanagan Lake and Kalamalka Lake are also at the overflowing point.  Thundershowers are forecast the next few days with winds.  Not looking good for the City of Kelowna.

However here in our park the storage area appears to be getting wet.  Likely due the ground water coming up through the ground re the high water table.  At this point we are not worried about our RV.

So way back to May 4th when we attended an event at a local winery which had a wonderful special on.  Turns out that we were there on the first day of their special re the Kelowna Spring Wine Festival.

This was the first time that we had been to the Ex Nihilo winery and vineyard and it is only a few miles from our home.

Spring has been very late to our area this year.

There were five wine tastings paired with four food tastings.

All for only $5.00 each. We later found out that after the 10 day festival this event would cost $15.00.  Shelagh this is what I had been teasing you about.

It was so lovely sitting out on the first sunny and warm day in weeks and weeks. It turns out that it was the last good day for yet another week or more.  We thoroughly enjoyed our outing and I felt so bad for the winery as the weather deteriorated.  The wines we tasted sell from $26.00 to $46.00 per bottle.  Sadly for the winery we bought not a single bottle.

The largest event of the festival was the WestJet tasting on Saturday May 6th.  It featured over 250 wines from just over 60 vineyards which cost us $159.00.  It did include a free taxi ride home which for us was a very very long way away.  However Colin did not indulge as I did and we got home safely.  We did this event a few times while living in Vancouver and this is the first time here in the Okanagan since we moved here in 2003.

We found some very wonderful lower priced wines ( under $20.00 ) to try.

They only sell so many tickets and it wasn’t too crazy. The footwear vs the actual clothing. Interesting.

We did not expect and were pleasantly surprised to see many stations of high end hors d’oeuvres.  

There was more than we could eat and more that we could drink.

A most fun and wonderful outing for us.  Yes it was supposed to be therapy for us.  By the way this wine was very good.

There was a variety of art on the walls. This particular painting caught my eye because of the butterflies that we saw the day the girls were put to rest.  Can you make out the face of a dog in the middle of the painting?

Kudos to the artist.

Sadly the next morning we woke up to this and our fun times were but a distant memory.  We knew that the lake was rising but there was no way that I was letting $159.00 go into the garbage which is why we decided to use our tickets and enjoy the WestJet tasting.  It took our minds off our various troubles and we found some great wines to try in the future.

I had planned the wine events to help take our minds off the loss of the girls.  Little did I know what the Universe and Mother Nature had in store for us.  Sometimes you just have to go with the flow ( pun not intended ) and take what life hands you.  So glad that we were fortified by the wine festival before the evacuation.

Meanwhile I recently received an email from long time friend Ken ( he has been mentioned many times in this blog ) and I know that his wife Margot had nothing to do with his email to me.  By the way Ken and Margot,  I so miss our fun times RVing in California and Mexico.  So Ken’s email is as follows.  It is less than 10 seconds and according to Ken depicts me as a baby.  A most interesting mini video.  I urge you to view it and if you know me you will get a good laugh at the end.

May 28th, 2010 is when I first created this blog.  I originally tried to post every day, that was my intention but life tends to get in the way.  Many bloggers are retired and I am not.  Soon I hope, at least one more year.  Here is my first post.  It is easy to go back and read my older posts if you are interested.  Of course I had very few readers back then but month by month my readers grew.  Now I have no idea how many I have other than that it is a lot, a huge bunch of you.  Almost every week I get an email or a comment from a  reader who has been following me for a while and finally made a comment for the first time ever.  That is so special for me.  I was stunned a few weeks ago to get an email  from a reader who had been with me since the beginning or close to.  She doesn’t live far from here and was the one who offered to take us and our RV in during the flooding.  Fortunately we did not need to take her and her husband up on their hospitality but we will for certain make a point to meet them later this summer.

I love it when you comment for the first time or after a long period of silence and so appreciate those who comment on a regular basis.  It is inspiring to know that someone is out there reading what I write and hopefully enjoying the photos.  I think I was a better writer way back then but now I do the best I can due to time restraints.  Not to mention that since 2011 I have had to endure many health issues, family problems and recently the loss of our beloved girls.  This blog has been a great way to record all of life’s major events as well as the day to day occurrences.  I often go back to find out what we were doing on such and such day.

You my dear readers have helped shape my thoughts and my destiny with your comments.  You have kept me going.  I’m not sure that I would have made it over certain hurdles put before me without your inspiration.  I appreciate each and everyone of you.  It has been so much fun to meet many of you.  That has happened mostly in Mexico and yes I love it when you just show up at our site on the Isla to say hello.  Emailing ahead and setting up a meal here or there is also special.  My most favorite is walking down the street in Mazatlan and having someone stop us and ask if I was Contessa.

Who knows what the future will bring?  But we do plan to stat traveling more next summer so I just might pay a visit to some of you.

Thank you for being there with me through all the ups and downs.  I think of you as my family.

We were dropping a watch off for repair about 12 days ago and this home across the street had this lovely display of tulips.

On May 6th, two days before we were evacuated we bought close to $150.00 worth of bedding plants at a nursery plus 3 huge bags of soil at Costco.  The duck was just hanging around the store.

The day we evacuated Colin handed our two flats of plants over to someone to care for. He gave them to someone else  ?????  and he has headed to Alaska for the summer.  I have called everyone that I can think of and asked around and no one knows what happened to our flowers.  At this point we have decided to not plant  anything this summer.

While I was waiting ( because of my sore knee ) in the car at the wine store ( AKA liquor store ) I noticed this protest across the street.  They were protesting GMO foods.

I also saw this van stop in front of me at the light. Much as I tried I could not figure out what he was advertising.  “Doggies is just a Bark Away”

You could have fooled me.

We are totally unpacked. However the section of my tops is rather full…..might need to cull some soon.  Colin has been working very hard to move all the bins from the house to under the house.  What was not in a plastic bin now is.  It was bothering him so much that he just had to do it.  However we will wait until we get back from Venice to power wash the patio and set it up.

Good to know that some goose eggs survived the flood.

This morning I caught this older gosling making a break away from its parents ( far right ).  They were all headed to the right when the kid decided to head back to shore.  Fortunately the baby decided to head to the neighbors lawn instead of ours.  Photo taken from inside, hence the reflections.

We both spent several hours today researching Venice.  Yesterday I saw my MD and had an xray and the left knee was just fine as I suspected.  She did tell me that I for certain would have problems in Venice and offered a script for pain meds.  I declined as my preferred drug is vino……spelt that way in both Spanish and Italian.  Does that mean that I can now speak four languages?  She concurred with the chiropractor I saw on Friday that I needed to elevate and ice and heat back and forth.  Well I did do that yesterday from about 3PM till 10PM but not today.  I really did plan to but I got caught up in the research of it all.  We made great progress on the trip today, more on that another time.

While I worked ( yes I call intense research work ) in the 30C/86F heat today, this couple enjoyed the lake.

Almost time to say adios for this post or rather I should say arrivederci or ciao if you are being informal.  For the first time ever this year and quite likely the last time we ( well Colin is ) are going to BBQ Copper River salmon.  Please sit down before reading the next caption.

This is not a typo.  Yes that reads $89.99/kg which is approximately $40.99 per pound!

A good reason to be only enjoying once this season.  It is a very small piece of fish.  So glad we are not entertaining at this time of year as we often do.

I have to go as Colin refuses to put the salmon on the BBQ until I publish this post.  We can’t risk the fish being overdone.

So very very happy to be here.  We got the RV unloaded in record time and even put back in the storage lot, all within 4.5 hours.  It helped that we brought a car load over yesterday and put it all away.  Today I had all sorts of bins prepacked so that when we arrived we only had to unload them.  Sadly I am not doing so well re my sore knee and I realized as I was unpacking that something was very wrong with my body.  We have the most wonderful chiropractor and she saw me with little notice just 30 minutes before a dinner party at her home.  My left Ilium was locked and creating many issues with the rest of my body.  So I have spent the last three hours icing then heat and repeat over and over.  The inflammation is what is creating my problems.  I really need this to clear up before our trip or I won’t be able to walk and that is what one needs to do to experience Venice.  Hopefully being home will relieve the stress and help me heal.  Of course I really need to be sitting at my desk checking out the many links on how to make our trip to Venice a good one rather than sit with my legs elevated.  I know that I should just let it ride and go with the flow once we arrive but I do need to know how to get from the airport to our Airbnb and which passes to buy re museums and which for the transport system, etc.

The snow pack that still has to melt.

The following is from a bulletin sent out by the Central Okanagan Emergency Operations Centre

It’s a phrase often heard during auctions and telethons: “Where are we going?” The response: ‘Higher’.

That’s the case with lakes, creeks and streams across the Central Okanagan during this ongoing weather driven response to flooding.

And in the next week, you can expect to see further increases as the melting snowpack in upper watershed elevations increases with daytime temperatures expected in the low 30’s late this weekend.

Tuesday night’s high winds are a good indication of what we could expect and perhaps more, as Okanagan Lake continues rising. This morning, Okanagan Lake was at the 342.98 metre mark, up three centimetres from yesterday. That’s just two centimetres below the projected 343 metre figure.

In response to this, local governments throughout the region are checking, monitoring and bolstering defences in place to protect critical infrastructure and upland areas. This is what private property owners along water bodies should also be doing. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best!

Meanwhile our lake has gone down just a titch since yesterday.  Sadly it looks very likely that a large portion of the City of Kelowna is going to experience flooding.

Having been on the evacuated side of this situation I feel so very badly for those now on evacuation alert.  Our city is entering record breaking conditions.

My fall was last Friday about dinner time.  My knee is still bothering me.  I had the opportunity today to walk a few blocks and it was a bit of a struggle.  Not good news for Venice but I intend to start in a few days to build up my walking.  I have realized that we haven’t had a good walk since our last long beach walk with the girls the end of March.

You may remember that when I fell I thought that I had broken my eye glasses but Colin assured me that they where only bent.  The arrow shows where the barely visible break is.

It was a long weekend here in Canada so today was the first opportunity for me to take them into the only place that I trust with my glasses as I am extremely sensitive and the fitting has to be perfect.  Sadly when Deb picked them up she told me that they were broken.  She is going to call tomorrow and try to get just the one piece required to repair the frame.  I certainly hope so as they are my most favorite frame.

We went to check out our lake yesterday and we were surprised to see it had gone down.  The water level has actually decreased to the point that two of our cement steps are now visible.  Meanwhile the city of Kelowna is only 5 centimeters away from flooding.  Okanagan Lake rose 4.5 centimetres overnight to a new level of 342.95 meters, five centimeters below its highest recorded level of 343 meters in 1948.  Flooding is imminent  yet our small lake level continues to lower.

We are quite surprised at how quickly our lake came up, this was taken May 4th.

This was taken the next day, May 5th and by the 8th we were being evacuated.  You saw the photos of our lawn covered and water up to the house on May 9th.

Colin and I are wondering if the powers that be might have made an error.  The incident commander chief we spoke with on the 8th or 9th told us that they had had to open the dam way up in the hills in order to release some of the water pressure as the dam may have burst.  Was our flood man made?  Had they opened the culvert drain at the far end of our lake and decreased the lake level before opening the dam, the flood very well many have been avoided.  The only other difference is the two days of heavy rain that we had.  However without the dam being opened for just a bit ( that is what they say, just a bit ) our flood may very well have been avoided.  In the past we have always been able to deal with the spring melt.  Over the past several days we have experienced abnormally high temperatures and yet our lake continues to lower.  Something is not correct in this equation.  With my new older age I am going to wisely let this theory of mine go.  Life is short and I really need to start enjoying it.

So that brings us to the good news.  We are going home tomorrow 😀  😀  😀   Finally.  Colin was supposed to work today but it is snowing up at Silver Star so the shoot has been delayed.  As our lake was cooperating we decided to move our return forward a few days.  So today we did some packing and loaded the Jeep.  I can’t believe how much one can pack into that car.  We brought a carload of stuff back home today and unpacked it and I also drove my car home to park it as we can only drive the RV and the Jeep tomorrow.

So very happy to be going home tomorrow.