There's a mouse in the house!

Our route from Kaslo to Osoyoos

Yes. We had a mouse in the van. It happened in a cute little campground in Rossland (interesting side note, they promote themselves on their website as “the only campground in Rossland”). The campground itself was one of our favourites so far – close to town, quiet, clean, affordable. Anyway, back to the mouse. We had been keeping snacks and dog treats in the middle “glove box” at the front of the van. The mouse nibbled on the bags the first night we were there (Mike thought he heard something while I was fast asleep). The next day we found the evidence and emptied out the box. Unfortunately, we had left a bag of dog treats in there hiding under some electronics. So obviously, the mouse came back for more. That night, I definitely was awoken to the scratching and chewing on the plastic. Mike opened the box while the mouse was in box and he jumped out. AHHHH. The dogs were completely useless sleeping the whole time while the mouse literally wandered around under their noses. I was also useless hiding my head under the pillow in case the dogs woke up and mayhem ensued. Luckily, this didn’t happen – the mouse left, Mike (my hero) put all of our food that wasn’t in the fridge in a storage container with a lid and we all eventually went back to sleep. When we got to our next campground, we heard no mouse, so we are hoping he stayed back in Rossland to greet someone else.

But I got ahead of myself with the mouse story. I think Mike ended in Crawford and the broom making shop. We also checked out Kaslo which is a cute little town just north after we got off the ferry from Crawford Bay. We did some mountain biking and hiking with the dogs in their recreation area and then rewarded ourselves with a dip at Ainsworth hot springs (it felt like Iceland where we always ended our day with a dip in the hot pools). We spent a bit of time in Nelson but just wasn’t loving the “big” city. By this time, Mike was in bike shopping mode so I walked the dogs along their waterfront area while Mike went to more bike shops (I teased him that he visited 17 shops before he finally found THE bike).

I also have to say that BC so far is a really dog friendly place. Every town seems to have off leash dog areas, on leash dog areas, dog beaches and water dishes outside store fronts. Most of the visitors centres have welcomed dogs inside. We were even walking by a store in Summerland and sure enough, a dog with his paws on the counter while his owner was paying.  We have had good success asking restaurant owners if our dogs can hang out with us while we eat on their patio.  I also like that the rules are specific: Your dogs are allowed here but must be on leash. Your dogs are allowed here and can be off leash. Your dogs are allowed on the walkway but stay off the grass. I think it’s helpful to have rules both for dog owners and non dog owners alike.

But I digress. From Nelson, we went to Rossland and we really liked the chill feeling of the town. We did some mountain biking during the day (they claim they are the mountain biking capital of Canada – I am not arguing, it was pretty fun there), walked around town a bit with the dogs in the evening and entertained the mouse at night.

Onward to Osoyoos and wow, what a view just going into town. This place is also very hot. It’s the tip of a desert and the town has really embraced the “desert” look in that you feel you are in Arizona or New Mexico. It is a also a really walkable/bikable city with pathways along its many water fronts. It is a resort town too and access to the lake is everywhere – public beaches and campgrounds on one side, hotels along the strip of land that joins one side of town to the other. And a provincial park on another spit of land. And thank goodness for all that access to water. The evening was lovely and warm but by noon the next day, it was HOT. It also doesn’t get very wintery here so a lot of retirees set up their big rigs in one of the year round RV parks rather than heading south for the November – March months. Osoyoos was also the beginning (for us) of “wine country”. We did a cidery tasting instead as I don’t have a clue what a good wine is supposed to taste like. We timed it so we would be day drinking on the day of the Ontario election fearing the results. It was fun but a visit to the Desert Centre definitely makes you think about the consequences of all this wonderful fresh fruit and local wines and ciders such as destruction of wild animal habitat (the badger is now almost extinct there) and threats to these really the amazing plant life that is well suited to living in the desert (ie it doesn’t need to be water and pruned and sprayed on a regular basis).

And so we continued north but I will leave the next post to Mike so can talk about the new bike.