The Meadowlark Festival

This year on the May long weekend I went to the Meadowlark festival in Penticton. Some part of my family has gone to it every year for the last 5 years, but I had never been. The festival is about bird watching and I am not much of a bird watcher. Every year they always have fun though and everyone else in my family has already gone at least once. Even my grandma took a turn and went last year, so this year I figured it was my turn to experience it.

I went with those who have gone every year, my two little sisters

and my mom and dad.

It takes 4 to 5 hours to drive from Surrey to Penticton and we left Friday morning. I took my laptop with me because these days it's not a good idea for me to completely take a weekend off work. I did most of my work on the ride there and the ride back.

At a road side stop before Princeton there was a whole bunch of fearless groundhogs. They were popping up from a number of different holes and probably get fed way more people food than is good for them.

My mom had looked on the Internet for accommodations in Penticton and apparently she hates looking on the Internet for this stuff. Sometimes my family camps and sometimes they stay in a hotel but either way they've had bad experiences with noisy groups partying on the May long weekend.

So the plan this year was to stay in a quiet place away from all that. She booked two nights at a campground up in the mountains overlooking Penticton. For the third night we would decide where to stay. The campground had a great view.

Unfortunately the campsites were not very good, with rocks spread out all over the place making it hard to find a place to put tents. The sites also weren't very far apart from each other and we had been told when we booked that there were only two sites left to choose from. Mysteriously, when we went to bed almost all the sites were empty.

To get a better view of the valley, my sisters and I hiked down through a little valley and up the other side.
He we could see for miles in many directions over Penticton and the two lakes and many mountains surrounding it.

That evening my dad had his first scheduled festival event, a walk through the dark to look for owls. He left, while the rest of us spent the evening at the campsite.

We discovered it was really cold up in the mountains at night! We played some cards with my sisters both bundled in their sleeping bags and sat around the fire.

I had trouble sleeping for any long period of time during the night. Most of me was warm except my feet which were a little too cold. In the morning we found frost on our tents. We decided it was a little too cold for camping and that we would get a hotel even though we had already paid for a second night at the campground.

We left the campground early in the morning so my dad could get to the meeting spot for his second event, a 7 hour birding tour with an expert.

The rest of us had an event in a couple hours so we ate some breakfast and then hung out at a nearby playground.

The event we went to was a tour of a bluebird box trail on the Blasted Church vineyard. Apparently a long time ago in this area when they wanted to move a church to a new location they used controlled dynamite to knock it down and then reuse much of the wood. If they failed at using the right amount of dynamite they got a blasted church.

The bluebird boxes were simple a set of boxes set up along posts around the vineyard for birds to make their nests in. Every year they are cleaned out and then filled with cedar shavings.

Many of the boxes were empty but a few had baby birds in them or eggs. We didn't disturb the baby birds but here are some bluebird eggs we peeked at.

After our tour we looked for a good motel with a pool. Unfortunately it was colder than usual for the May long weekend and so none of the outdoor pools were ready yet. We choose to stay in the Flamingo motel. Then we met my dad after his tour and drove back up the mountain to take down camp. Afterwards we drove south to Okanagan Falls where my family has a tradition of visiting Tickleberrys for ice cream and kettle corn.

They make the kettle corn out front in a giant iron kettle

They have about 50 different flavours of ice cream and this is the size of their "single" cone. You get to choose 3 flavours for it. I had Banana Fudge, Triple Chocolate Brownie and Rocky Mountain Raspberry. It was delicious!

During the weekend we played RoboRally 3 times. My sister Natalie is addicted to the game. I didn't even plan on bringing it but when they picked me up at my apartment she grabbed it off my desk and took it to the van. We played sort of a mini game on the car trip there (it's not really a travel game!) in which I won. Then we played a game at the campground in which I was last and then a game on a much tougher board in the hotel and I won by a mile.

On Sunday my sisters and I slept in while my mom and dad went to an event involving watching many different species of hummingbirds while eating brunch. When they returned we went out for the day to visit beaches at both lakes and drive a loop out of town doing some bird watching.

I forgot to bring my camera for this part of the day! Natalie and I had a lot of fun tossing a frisbee back and forth on the first beach on Okanagan Lake. I was working on my forehand throw to improve at Ultimate and unfortunately I hit a little kid in the head. Apparently his mom didn't seem to mind. It helped her get him off the beach and off to some lunch.

Natalie and I went for a short swim at the second lake, Skaha Lake. It was really cold but not as cold as I expected. I guess I'm more used to the ocean.

In the evening there was the Lost finale but I only watched part of the recap hour before we got in the van to drive to our last event at an observatory. I used my dad's ticket while he went to bed early.

The Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory has a huge 26m dish and many small ones.

We weren't there to learn anything about the observatory though. It was just the location for our talk about the earth, the moon, the sun and the stars. The presenter used what he called "high tech" devices to explain the phases of the moon, eclipses and the layout of the milky way galaxy. Really he just used spheres and his head represented the earth. The phases of the moon happen because of the different angle the sun shines on the moon from compared to the angle we see it from, not due to the earth casting a shadow on the moon! That's called an eclipse.

We talked about star charts and part of the presentation was supposed to be to go outside and look up at the stars but unfortunately it was too cloudy to see much.

The next morning we drove back to Surrey taking the scenic route down through Osoyoos to do more birding. The weekend was a lot of fun and luckily it wasn't all about the birding. It was good to get away from the city for a while. I hope to find more weekends this summer to do a lot more camping, hiking and swimming.