Planes, Trains & Automobiles...and not forgetting boats!

The last couple of weeks we've had my parents visiting. Chris was working, but there had to be some good come from me being the resident couch potato - I got to hang out with them and act as a tour guide and occasional driver!

In amongst the tourist stuff we did Chris and I have also started house-hunting in earnest so they tagged along on a couple of days looking at houses with us. Actually I think we all had fun doing that - North American houses are sooooo different from what you get in England and our UK money will go a lot further here so I've been measuring up spare rooms for suitability as a scrapbooking space!

We took a trip over to the Kootenays for a night staying at the Ainsworth Hot Springs resort. We ate at the Dock n' Duck pub overlooking Kootenay Lake and soaked in the warm waters and caves at the resort till kicking out time. One advantage of staying at the resort is you get early access into the pools in the morning so we made the most of that too!

In Kaslo (somewhere I've been 3 times now) we 'discovered' the worlds oldest intact sternwheeler - the SS Moyie. It's 3 stories tall and 160 ft long - in all honestly I'm not sure how I missed it (doh!) but there you go - I've always been obsessing about food and fast roads whenever we've rode into Kaslo. A great little side trip with film, history and a beautifully reconstructed boat that used to serve up and down Kooteney Lake between 1898 and 1957 - really enjoyed that!

The 3 of us also took a bumpy drive up to Myra Canyon trestles - part of the old Kettle Valley railway. Last time Chris and I went up there was April and at the time still largely covered in snow! This time the weather was gorgeous and we had a lovely walk along the old line taking in the views down to Lake Okanagan, the valley and beyond. And talking of the Kettle Valley Railway we also drove down to Summerland and took a ride on an old steam train on one of the few remaining stretches of track - a little late birthday surprise for my Dad (only a month late!)

Did I mention we had near-perfect weather for almost the entire time they were visiting?! Lucky us! And perfect for lazy lunches on the patio at the local winery, or our favourite lakeshore resort, driving into the hills to a small local goats cheese dairy for sampling cheese and enjoying gelato, wine-tasting, shopping for local product at some local farm shops and taking walks along the lakeshore in downtown.

We ventured an early start one morning for a Kelowna special event - a visit from the 3rd largest aircraft in the world - a Russian Antonov AN-124 - flying into Kelowna 'international' airport to deliver a bunch of helicoptors for a refurb at Flightcraft - I love these big planes - they way they just 'hang' in the air, seemingly unmoving and defying gravity! Very cool - lots of plane-spotters out for that one - but then it would appear we'd have to include ourselves in that category (That and the train-spotting - you can see what a bad influence my Dad is?!)

Thanks Mum and Dad for visiting. I hope you enjoyed yourselves as much as we enjoyed hosting you and showing off our new hometown!