January 13: A Little Bit of Everything at Eagle Point

We are doing a lot of things, including skiing at Silverstar, walking in the neighbourhood, seeing more wildlife and enjoying the weather views.

We skied at Silver Star last week and had the pleasure of skiing in temperatures near 0C with brilliant sunshine.  (Sorry, rest of Canada, we can’t help ourselves……..)  The trails are well-groomed and wide, and the village is colourful and unique when not obscured by falling snow.

Walking in our neighbourhood is an education every day.  The original developer had a lot of visionary ideas, but unfortunately he ran out of money.  The ideas:  lots were 3-20 acres in size, and homes had to be neutral in colour to blend in with the natural surroundings.  Each road leading into an area had an animal or bird theme with a beautiful sculpture at the entrance with the theme highlighted.

Well, maybe this wasn’t quite as beautiful:  this was Sasquatch Road.  We had made an offer on a house here, unsuccessfully, but Brian desperately wanted Sasquatch Road as an address.  Each house in an area has a stone at the end of the driveway, with the lot number as well as a carving of the theme.  (Ours is a much smaller stone, under snow at the moment…)

Walking along some of these roads is like walking in a ghost town.  For example, on Eagle Point, we are the only developed lot.  There are a number of others, but none have homes on them yet. It's hard to tell whether people have bought these as potential retirement locations or what.

The bird feeders are up, and I have the pleasure of seeing a lot of birds that are new to me.  I mentioned the Clark’s Nutcrackers, (who are pigs), and have a somewhat better picture of them.  They are almost twice the size of jays, and have some handsome colouring.  More pictures will follow when I can get ones of the Stellar Jays or the Flickers.

Weather is really fascinating here.  We had this idea of constant sunshine, but that is not the case.  The whole Okanagan experiences valley fog, coming from the presence of warm air over cold waters of the lakes.  The variety comes from whether the fog is on the bottom or when we are in the midst of it.

When we are in sunshine, but see the fog below, it looks like a sea in the valley.  Sunsets can be quite impressive.  What we just learned today is that this view is almost entirely that of the United States—we just discerned the border in the distance.  We could see con trails in the sky, and Brian matter-of-factly informed me those were fighter jets.  I asked him how he could possibly assess that.  Answer:  they flew up to the border and turned away.  Yep.  Watch out Trumpie-poo.

When we are in the midst of the fog, we can see little, and it is hazy everywhere.  This is when we get fabulous hoar frost in no time at all.  Driving up and down the mountain can be a little challenging at this point.  We have about 19” of snow on the ground, but the temperatures are around 0C and this is not a hard winter to take.

We continue to get new wildlife sightings every day.  We drove into Osoyoos and had to stop for a small herd of Big Horn Sheep on the road.  (No big horns—these were the ewes.)

Life is not dull here.