monck park

monck provincail park was the next stop on our trip. we took the scenic route from manning and very much enjoyed both the weather and the winding roads with little or no traffic. if we had thought of it at the time, we probably would have stopped to fish at one of the many little lakes.

monck pp is set on the shores of nicola lake and has a playground for the kids, a great swimming area, flush toilets (no showers), and beautiful views to the lake from just about every campsite. unlike manning (and birkenhead) the campsites were not very private. yes, there's large pine trees lining the sites, but no lower brush or shrubs to shield other campers from view. not that we were doing anything we shouldn't be, but still- it's like living in glass houses. one of the other campers had 2 sites: one in front of us, and one in back, and so sawyer would bark (more like grunt) at all the teens going back and forth in the middle of the night cutting through our site to get to one of theirs. (also one of them had a guitar and it was driving me nuts for two reasons: 1) i didn't have mine, and 2) it was out of tune. i wish i could have brought one of mine.) that, would be the only negative of this park. the pic below is one derek took of a beautiful sunrise (aparently the colours aren't nearly as intense as irl), and if you click to enlarge, you'll see a single loon swimming.we did stop in merritt to pick up some groceries and ice for the cooler and while driving through their main street, we came across this amazing building. aparently some bank robber hid out there and stashed his loot way back in the goldrush days!the cherries from the okanagan are probably the best in the world:so juicy and sweet i had to take a pic!!!

another really nice thing about monck pp was the large grassy open area (obviously a septic system under it all) with two native pit house depressions, and where the kids could run around and dance:there was this really neat, really dead tree near our site. i took some pics of it with amazing clouds in the background:alas, it was time to go and move on to birkenhead (next post) via the duffy lake road and some other highway i can't remember. we stopped at duffy lake for a breather from the winding roads clinging to the sides of the mountains:

i think if we went to monck again, we'd hope to go with another family. it's a great space, but could be so much better with a larger group (not too large though) of people.