RV Lifestyle This is not another place. It is the place. —Charles Bowden Between Oliver and Osoyoos Lake Osoyoos Osoyoos Lake, the warmest lake in Canada, is particularly suited for a dip early in the morning before the beach traffic reaches its busy peak, a blissful way to start a day. Whether you descend the steep switchbacks of the Crowsnest Highway into Osoyoos or drive through Penticton past the rugged Skaha Bluffs, the South Okanagan appears completely different from its surroundings, almost un-Canadian. Its reputation often precedes it of course – Canada’s “pocket desert,” a small area of bunchgrass, prickly pear cacti and rattlesnakes that cling to undeveloped sites in the valley between Oliver and Osoyoos. The dominant shrub in this area is the antelope-brush, a gangly plant that is covered with fragrant yellow blossoms in spring. A place of great geological and biological diversity, birders come from all over the continent to see the 200 species that breed in the Okanagan. There are few places of similar size in North America which could match that total. The diversity is a product of both location – sandwiched between the coast and the prairies, between cold northern forests and Great Basin deserts – and elevation. The Okanagan is British Columbia’s deepest interior valley, extending from the hot valley floor at 900 feet to alpine peaks at 7,300 feet elevation. The valley was born millions of years ago in the collisions of continents which built the entire West Coast of North America. Two hundred million years ago, the West Coast was somewhere between the Okanagan and Calgary; then a large piece of land known as Quesnellia slid into North America, creating much of the British Columbia interior. A second collision formed the coastal regions of the province. 24 | www.snowbirds.org
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