Destination Kelowna!!!

After three long, frustrating days of searching for a vehicle Bren and Derek finally settled on one.  A Toyota Sienna, which for the uninitiated is a 7 seater V6 van.  It suits us just fine and runs well for a car that has more than 300 000 km on the clock!!!  We must say a BIG thankyou to Derek and Marie for looking after us for the past few days.  It was fantastic to be able to catch up, meet their two georgeous kids and get acclimatised to Canadian weather.

The weather hasn't been the best but its been a blast for the boys to be able to play in the snow for the first couple of days.  Today was very rainy and turned the snow into cold, mucky slosh.  After fitting winter tyres onto the van we headed off on the Coquihalla Highway (otherwise known as the Coque) - destination; Kelowna.  This highway is renowned as being a bit dicey in bad weather.  Road conditions can change dramatically as the road heads up and over the Coquihalla Mountain.  The summit of the mountain reaches 1244m above sea level so it is often clouded in and if its going to snow anywhere it will snow here as well as being windy - just to make life interesting for motorists.  Thankfully for us though the Highway wasn't too bad.  Yes it was snowing. And yes it was foggy.  However the road in our direction had just recently been snow plowed making road conditions a little easier.

Ready to go...

Our wheels...

Thankyou Mr Snowplough Man...

The connector.... Yikes

Home.....

The Coque was a good introduction to driving in horrible conditions because the second leg of the journey was even worse.  Bren did so well driving the connector road to Kelowna.  Visibility was almost nil, there was snow on the road and snow falling from the sky.  I have never been so tense in my entire life in the passenger seat.  At the same time it was eerily fascinating to see snow almost covering entire mountains and trees.  At one point the entire road became white with snow.  There was  only a very small  section of road that was visible.  Both Bren and I were beyond relieved when we descended below the fog and where the road started to clear of snow.  We were even more relieved when the "Welcome to Kelowna"sign came into view.  At last we were in our new home city. Phew.  First impressions - beautiful - and cold.