Retroblogging the megatrip: Part 5b

This will be a quick one today. I have some thoughts and pictures to share from the leg we drove between Grand Forks and Vancouver. This is the third time that we have made this drive with children: once with Max (with Max's Grandpa driving through a VERY snowy Manning Park; they actually closed the highway shortly *after* we got on it), once with Max and Leo (in our rental Mitsubishi Lancer - the trip where Leo first got to sit forward in a vehicle…in order to make him stop screaming) and now with all three kids. The trip had gone well so far and we had high hopes for this leg. Let's see how it all turned out!
Through Rock Creek to one of my two favourite sets of switchbacks on the drive. We had our first honest-to-goodness "I have to pee now" pull-offs so Max could use a ditch (kind of remarkable that it took that long, now that I think about it). Somewhere just before descending into Osoyoos (my other favourite set of switchbacks), there is a set of housing developments whose entry streets are all marked with giant metal statues. The last time I was down with Max and Leo at the end of 2012, Grandpa took Max, Leo and me to this big Sasquatch statue and found some black bramble on the ground that he managed to convince the boys was Sasquatch hair. Since then the statue has been somewhat legendary. So of course we had to stop off on the way through this time. Here is Sasquatch terrorizing my family. Or vice-versa.

It's possible that Sasquatch ate Henry. No, wait, he turns up in later pictures.

As per the norm, we grabbed a bite to eat in Osoyoos. Unlike last time (when we stopped by the lake and Max had a major freakout because we weren't going to stay and swim all day), we didn't stop to see the sights. We kept right on trucking. But only after we stopped to take this picture. And Max learned to pump himself on a swing in this park. And Holly got an Iced Capp. I suppose that's actually a pretty eventful visit.

We kept going right up to the Mariposa Farms fruit stand on the side of the road. This is the site of one of our more hilarious past misadventures. In 1999, just after having left my Dad's place to move out to Vancouver, we were told that Mariposa sold the best fruit so we were watching all around Keremeos for a Mariposa sign until our hawk-eyes picked a small one out on the roadside that said "Mariposa Farm: <-". So we turned left and virtually plunged off the side of the road down this super steep driveway to a farm. Yes they had fruit. No, this wasn't where they sold it, it's where they grew it. Somehow, we managed to rev our engine enough to get us back onto the highway (seriously, it was like a cliff) and kept driving until we saw the 15-foot Mariposa Orchards billboard a few km further along. We were much smarter this time around and just waited for the fruit stand. We picked up a 10 lb. box of cherries, some dried fruit snacks, a few apricots and waited a foolishly long time for their "famous samosas" (that weren't really that good). Why samosas? It turns out that a lot of properties in the area are now owned by South Asian families. Samosas are available in abundance together with all of the fresh fruit.

Our only other stop in the southern Okanagan Valley was in Princeton (almost the only other possible place to stop), where we gassed up, changed Henry and his seat yet again (seriously, that kid was getting sly about how much water he was drinking back there…his brothers were definitely giving him water bottles when we weren't looking) and grabbed Booster Juices all around (OK, fine, we weren't helping with the urine situation either). And then it was on to Manning Park.

No seriously. Henry is still alive at this point. I swear.

The last time we had driven through Manning Park in 2010, we thought it would be nice to check out the Alpine Meadows, a place where my parents took me as a young child. We got up to Cascade Peak (here is the Google Map - that crazy road is what we had to drive up…too bad it doesn't show elevation change), but the road further up the mountain had been closed. So we decided to give it another go this time and were rewarded with clear passage all the way up (follow that road on the map right up to the end). It was a little dicey in some places and I wasn't liking the beating that the van was taking, but some of the views were breathtaking. And at the very top, it was actually very snowy. Most of the trails were not walkable without hiking gear due to the snow and we were advised to not disturb the flora. We didn't quite see flowers like in this link, but I can imagine that once the snow clears up, it can actually get quite colourful. Here is a whole ton of pictures from our stroll through the meadows.
These first few pictures show the general grandeur of the vistas, how wide the road was and the elevation from the Cascade Lookout to the highway below.

And now for the "fun in the snow" spread.

And finally some wildflower pictures:

Yellow glacier lily

Spring beauty

Western anemone

After stopping by the Meadows, we crawled back down the hill to take some more pictures (and chase chipmunks, who were very bold about approaching us!) at the Cascade Lookout:

All of the boys crashed for most of the rest of the ride through the park and past Hope while Holly and I listened to a podcast detailing the downfall of former L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling. By the time the kids woke up, we were bearing down on Chilliwack, everyone was hungry and Henry wouldn't stop crying. We had some ideas of the type of place we wanted to hit up for food, but as Henry ratcheted up the noise, we caved and stopped for our first McD meal of the trip. We went to this McDonalds (yes, it's bordered by a street called Lois Lane) and it was SKETCHY. Nasty stuff happening in the women's washroom (underwear, empty liquor bottles and suspected drug use), people moving their cars so that they can be seen (we did that!), a well-dressed family coming in and the mom actually asking us if it was OK to eat there . . . Awesome. Henry eventually got himself back to the edge of OK, but needed monitoring. His bros went a bit crazy and demanded to play with their "How to Train Your Dragon" discs that came with their Happy Meals…Holly said really loudly "No! You can't get your discs out!" except she only came close to saying discs if you know what I mean. For the rest of the night and a couple of days thereafter, the boys called their Mom "Miss Inappropriate". Oh boy. It was definitely a moment.
We put on a whole whack of episodes of Busytown Mysteries on the way toward downtown and that helped cool everyone off. Everyone was excited to get out of the car at Chateau Mishna-Chauve (the lovely home of our friends Marni, Cedric, Madeleine, Eleanor and Felix) and some of the permanent residents decided to come out and play after dusk (and bedtime, probably…oops!) with the visitors from out East. It was only one day (and "only" 518 km), but it was a long one. We were excited to start the next phase: VAN-CITY!

See Max! You DO get tired.

Oh, Henry. So cranky!

I suppose this is the boys looking for their, uh, discs at the "big boys table".