The Lake

My folks live near Lake Okanagan in Canada. It takes maybe 15-20 minutes to get to the "beach" (altho Canadians don't call it a beach). It had sand, it's a beach. Lake Okanagan is called "Canada's Hawaii" for the climate. It's nothing like Hawaii. It's a temperate zone and there are cherries, blackberries & strawberries in season in August. Heh.

In the past, we'd go to a beach that was a bit of a hike, but less crowded than the beaches along the main drag. My folks called it the secret beach. It no longer has any amenities, since the big fire that ravaged the area a couple of years ago (my folks were evacuated for 2 weeks, but their house survived - others in their neighborhood burn to the ground). In any case, since we visited during the high tourist season, my sister made the suggestion to go to the beach after dinner. If we showed up around 6:30 to 7:00, there were still a couple of hours of daylight and the beach is pretty empty. And that's what we did.

Connor absolutely loved it. This particular beach has an extremely shallow slope out to the deep water. Connor & Diana would swim way the heck out, yet still be able to stand. The buoys protected them from the various water sports being enjoyed further out, but on the very windy visit, it was like watching a show of sails and spray.

Trevor spent each visit building sand castles. He is not fond of getting wet or very dirty (Connor EATS dirt), and after the first time, Trevor didn't even wear his swim trunks - just regular shorts. Diana helped with diving in the water to find Trevor the coveted black sand to decorate his castles (???). Connor just really liked the sand and water.

My sister and her kids came along a couple of times to join us, which was always fun. My niece seemed a little bored and didn't want to swim one time, so I gave her my digital camera and told her to take some interesting shots :) She got the one of Trevor for me.

I'm betting next time we will visit the lake again the same way. The evenings really worked well, and the kids had so much fun. It was less stressful for us as parents as well, since we didn't have to hunt to find our kids - they were the only ones in the water! Kudos to Diana for swimming with Connor so much - next time we'll get some good goggles for her.