Goat's Peak Hike, Kelowna, BC

Goat's Peak Provincial Park is a small park in West Kelowna near the shores of the Okanagan Lake. One of my colleagues at work strongly suggested me to go on this hike as it had nice scenery and not too many people. Joining me on this hike were my friends Kanwal and his wife, Sonal. The trailhead was a quick 30 min drive from our locality. 

We were on our way on the trail by 10am. It was a cloudy and a bit overcast day and there was also a forecast for a rain later in the afternoon. The initial section of the trail is pretty flat is a more of a casual walk with the open Okanagan lake on your right. To the left is a wall of rock running along the length of this section. There were some good views of the lake from here. The actual elevation gain started sometime later but a good 2 hours hike later we decided to stop at a view point and end our hike there. Here we sat for a while, took some photos and chatted for a while. But most importantly we took in the views there. Too often we get more involved with the task of actually completing our hike to the top and forget to just chill and enjoy the hike. 

We started our descent back from here when sometime into our hike down it started drizzling. We hurried up hoping that either the drizzle stops or we reach our car before the drizzle turns into a full on downpour. We found ourselves somewhere in the middle. We were still a bit away from our vehicles when it started raining heavily and by the time we reached our vehicles we were a bit drenched. Fortunately not too much for we had our rain jackets on.  Overall, it was a good half day to spend on a weekend. 

A trip to Greenwood, the smallest incorporated city in Canada.

Greenwood is a city of around 600 people located in south British Columbia. Back in 1890s it used to be a hub of mining with population touching 3000 people but over time when the mining industries shutdown it's population dwindled to its present levels. Back then they even had 2 newspapers being published from the city. It was incorporated as a city in 1897 and even though the population later declined it has kept the city label hence its claim to fame as the smallest incorporated city in Canada.

A few months back Divu, his wife Vani and I made a day trip to Greenwood. It was both, a casual ride to a nearby attraction and also as practice for my car driving. I bought a used Corolla last year and having got the license early this year I wanted some highway driving practice. The drive itself was unremarkable and we reached Greenwood after 2 hours of driving. But, much to our dismay the Rail Museum, which is on the way to Greenwood, that I badly wanted to visit was closed unexpectedly. We wandered around aimlessly looking for any person inside or outside but there was no one so we moved on to the city. We roamed the streets of Greenwood just taking a look at the cool old buildings there. It all looked like a set from a western movie. Some other pretty buildings were the post office, then on the Main road there are many more with the one with Greenwood Saloon Inn perhaps the best. 

We stopped near the City Hall building which is one of the prettiest buildings there and were just chatting there when a car stopped near us and a guy started talking to us. He mentioned that they used to hang people in the top floor of the City Hall. That was quite a way to start off a conversation. Divu then asked him if there were any haunted buildings there and the guy replied with 'which isnt?'. We all laughed out loud but seriously I am a fan of all things spooky and creepy and had someone actually shown us around these buildings I would have loved to explore them. Unfortunately it was not going to happen then.

City Hall

As we were just parting ways the guy then asked a question which seemed quite random. He asked us if we know Clint Eastwood. We said yes we know him and I actually love his Dollars trilogy of westerns. After this line he hands me, because I was the closest to him, a paper with something written on it and zooms away. We were left standing on the road with the paper in hand. I read the contents and it had all kind of white supremacist and Islamophobic stuff. I chuckled to myself thinking what would his reaction have been if had found out that I am a Muslim. This was the first case of me encountering something like this in Canada. Well, we threw the paper away and resumed our walk intentionally not thinking too much about it.

Adding to our bad luck, the museum in Greenwood too was closed. So we drove to Grand Forks and then on to Christina Lake where we stopped briefly before heading back. We had lunch in a restaurant in Grand Forks wrapping up our small casual trip.