Campervan Trip to BC's Wine Country in our Roadtrek Zion

It's Good Friday of the Easter long weekend and we are here in Osoyuz at the Inkomi Resort. It's quite a big complex. They have campgrounds near the lake and they have a nice hotel over here and a nice winery as well. It's a nice drive and it's beautiful to be here in kind of desert country. So join us as we explore BC's wine country. It's early but yes they have rattlesnakes here. We're in the desert after all. I think if you did like commercial facilities this is as nice as any. There's a pool, children's playground, there's nice beach access, so a lot of positive things. Gorgeous views. You're right on the water. The reason we're here is because we want to de-winterize so we need access to water and sewer services so we can get the water out and in and out and in. You can watch our video on de-winterizing last year and that's what we're going to go through again hopefully tomorrow morning. We'll put a link up here. This path is quite nice. All desert to our right. Lake is off to the left. Main trail goes that way up to the resort and the winery. We're hoping tomorrow that we can de-winterize. Failing that we're going to see if we can find any rattlesnakes that are up early. It's a cloudy day but it's actually, even though I'm wearing a jacket, it's actually 19 degrees right now. It's a sure sign summer's coming. We just had a whole pile of mosquitoes flying around our heads. I hate to say it. Mosquitoes or not, we're looking forward to warmer weather. Hi there. Hello my friend. Can I pet you? You're sort of like our cat Precious but a bit bigger. Yeah, you don't really like to be petted. Oh, hi. Yes, you're very nice. Yes, hi. Thank you. Thank you for coming today. He's got sand on him. He's been lying in the dirt. Good fella. What a good fella. Oh, hello. You're lovely. You are very lovely. Hello. Coming to visit too? Hello. Oh, you're beautiful. Look at your coloring. Hi. Yes. Yeah, maybe that's what they think. The camera. Hi. You could use some grooming. Can I take that off for you? Have a look. Here we go. There we go. Well, good morning everyone. I'm actually right now in a field of sagebrush on my right and some other bushes which I'm not entirely sure what they are. Just trying to get out of the wind. It's about just before 8 o'clock, about 7.45 in the morning. I'm just out for a walk. Mickey's probably having a cup of coffee back at the van. I was hoping to get out for an early morning paddle, but it's way too windy. Nice morning. I was hoping it wouldn't be quite so windy in part for the paddle, but in part to probably listen to what are likely a large number of really interesting wild birds here. But with the wind, I think many of them are either I can't hear them or they're just not out. Precious' life is all about eat, sleep, and love. Water going in her tanks. We put one cup of bleach mixed with two gallons of water in the fresh water tank. As a part of our de-winterizing process. And now we're required to drive around for a little bit to let it swish around in the fresh water tank. Get it all sanitized. So we're going to drive around Los Soyos and we'll show you some sights and then we'll go back to the campground and take our new spot on the waterfront. This is a very nice hotel, the Watermark Hotel. It's right on the water. A nice restaurant in there too. And they also have a Boston Pizza. Okay, we're back at the resort and we're going to finish our de-winterization process at our new campsite. And even though we're quite a distance out, you can see some weeds but the bottom is not that far. This is probably why this lake gets so warm. You can see behind me how arid this is. Despite the fact that we're in a mountain valley with lakes, all the soil below the top of the mountains is really just sand, which is what you'd expect from a desert-like region. Particularly noticeable are the vegetations lacking and you can see the soils sort of eroding just all sand and that's basically what that whole area would be like over that way. Anyway, I'm out for a quick paddle this morning and it's nice. There was one boat that went by and it kind of disturbed the quietness, but other than that, it's just gorgeous here in the morning. I wish I'd gotten up about an hour earlier. It's just a little after 8 o'clock. Boat wake! It's been an interesting stay because we had a few water issues this time. I wasn't paying attention for a brief period of time when we were filling our water tank and so we overfilled. And we overfilled so much it came out of the vent which is up behind me and so that spilled water into the van which was annoying and we could see dripping out. And then this morning, so we cleaned that up yesterday, and then this morning, just as we're checking out, I'm sitting by the picnic table and all of a sudden I see water pouring out of the back end of our van just down by the rear passenger side wheel. And quite a bit of water pouring out so I can't figure out what the heck's going on so I stick my head underneath and it looks like a drain valve there. So I go in the van and what's happened is we had a big water container, probably a five gallon water container that maybe we had two gallons in, and I had just moved it to a different spot in the van and I guess the plastic cracked so it was leaking quite profusely. So the water leaked in the back of the van, it was running out underneath the van, so we just had to stop, move everything that may have gotten damp and just left the area clear so that it can dry out. I think it'll be fine. That's why we have all that stuff piled up back there. So a couple of learning points for us, me especially, always pay attention when you're filling the water. You've seen some of our previous videos, it's pretty common to end up getting too much of a water fill, but this one was even more so because I wasn't paying direct attention. Two, if you do spill water in the van, there does appear to be drains at least in some sections which is very positive. And in our case, we just opened it up and dried it up pretty quickly. It just goes to show you that in van life, there's never a dull moment. I think it's more funny that we're in the driest part of British Columbia and we've got water leaks. Yeah, water issues. Now we're sort of heading out of Osoyuz, we're going to head up north towards Penticton. And we're kind of open, Gordon is very keen on finding a nice, dry, sunny area to park the van and let it air out for a little bit, which I think is a good idea. And I'm really keen to locate one of the wineries that I like called Red Rooster, which is up in the Narrow Manor Bench, which is north of Penticton. So tonight we're kind of open, we might find a nice place to stay, we might stay overnight. Gordon's off work tomorrow. Or, you know, if we're kind of fed up and we want to go home, we'll just head home. Freedom on the road. Getting close to summer. The reason that this one's called Chip off the Old Block is because we took some of the grafting off of the old ones and planted some more. So these are off of our younger ones. But it still has a little bit of heritage to it. It does, yeah. Well thank you so much for your time. You're welcome. We just stopped at a municipal park in Penticton. Gordon's just opening the back doors to dry out the van a bit more. I'm just making some hot dogs for lunch. When I said we were eating lunch, I didn't realize it was probably around 3.30. You're for lunch. Yes. So now we have to find a place to stay tonight. So we're just going to go back to Okanagan Lake Provincial Park and see if we can find a spot there. Right now only the south campground is open. Look at the views. Lost the sun, but amazing views. So here we are at Okanagan Lake Provincial Park South. And we managed to find a spot. There's quite a few of them around. I think a lot of people left yesterday. We got some firewood and now we can finally relax hopefully. We still had some left. It's not just for trail breaking. It's actually the last one. Cheers. Salute. Now I'm ready to go and hunt our Easter dinner. Good morning. It's about 6am and we've got the sun coming up as you can see over my shoulder. We had a nice evening. It didn't get too cold. It got down to about 7. It was supposed to get down to 2. So a little bit warmer than was expected and that's probably because the cloud cover has moved in a little sooner than everyone had thought. We're expecting to get rain for the route back, but it's been a pleasant stay. We had a few challenges with regard to our de-winterizing process, but it all worked fairly well at the end of the day. And yeah, we had a nice trip. I think staying in a commercial campground worked to get done what we needed to do, but it's a little too busy for us. Even this particular campground, the spots are a little smaller, but still it's very nice. And it's hard to beat a morning like we have right now with no one else at all on the beach. We're heading back to Vancouver. We're going to take a different route this time. We're going slightly north and then veering west on the Okanagan Connector. It's the 97C Highway. And then we'll connect to the Coquihalla Highway, number 5, and then head south. The Okanagan Connector, which takes us up quite high actually. I think it's one of the higher alpine passes and then over on to Coquihalla. And if all goes well, we'll stop and get some of the famous, world famous, vegetarian samosas at the truck stop on the Coquihalla Highway. I'm actually really looking forward to it. Thank you so much for watching our video. We hope you enjoyed our trip to the Okanagan. If you like our videos, please be sure to subscribe. And we'll see you next time. See you next time. you