Day 16: McBride BC - Penticton BC

As promised, the view from out the front door.  Note mountains with SNO on them.

Also outside the door, or rather above it, is this sign, carefully photographed in the rear window of That Shitbox Dodge to make it look more arty.

You will note, if you click the above fully to embiggen it, that while it warns of the hazards of falling H2O, it does *not* counsel the inattentive traveller not to tolchock his or her gulliver against the dangly flowerpot.  The bastards.

Hey-ho for BC-16 eastwards again.  More of the same, but with a deer either side of the road on leaving town.  They are the same colour as the unwiped portion of That Shitbox Dodge's rear window.  There was also evidence of a major lorry-versus-Bambi smooshing a bit further up the road.  I found myself wondering why the driver of the Ford F-150 in front of me did a swift three-point turn on passing the smoosh-stain and shot back towards McBride.  My suspicion was that he was looking for roadkill.

Turned off onto BC-5 just before Tete Jaune Cache, thereby avoiding venturing back into Alberta.  Lovely road.  A brief climb out the the Fraser River valley and into that of the North Thompson River, which means it's downhill pretty much all the way to Kamloops, which is a Good Thing from the perspective of fuel consumption.  The gophers living at the Thunder River rest area have taken up golf:

At another lay-by was this slightly shabby but sound-looking Citroen:

in marked contrast to the not-at-all-shabby river:

The first fruit stand and vineyard popped up about 40 km north of Kamloops; such things will form a major component of the scenery the way down to the border and beyond.  Kamloops bring navigational complications because it's the junction of a Several of main roads but eventually you get fired off up the valley of the South Thompson River.  By now the space between the trees is a lot larger than it was further north and it has a semi-desert look to it.  The pale-coloured cliffs along the opposite side of the river looks as though they were airlifted here from New Mexico.  However, the branch of BC-97 I wanted (for they are legion in these parts) climbs back into the hills and looks more like Colorado:

Monte Lake

Down into the Okanagan valley ad turn sharp right onto the minor road along the west side of said lake.  It's narrow and twisty and they're digging it up but the main road goes the other side of the hills on the east side, so you can't see the lake, and also smack through the middle of Kelowna.  Which you do not want to do at that time of day.  As noted in 2015, the lake is long, and monster-haunted, and here is a picture to prove it¹:

Ogopogo (circled); the Okanagan Lake monster

USAnia tomorrow, and hopefully:

• I will get to see the Columbia River gorge this time, and
• The NSA haven't tipped off the chaps at the border about all the beastly things I may have thought about the Fanta Menace.

Additional: Since I turned off the option to allows Windows to turn off the wifi adaptor on this box, the wifi adaptor has taken to turning itself off anyway.  I have just installed a new driver for the said network adapter.  If this does not fix it the screams of pent-up rage and fury will be audible in Fairbanks.

1: May contain traces of Lie