Thursday, August 16, 2007

My Weekend in Omak - Part 3

Part 1 - Friday August 10

Part 2 - Saturday August 11

Sunday, August 12

Up early again of course. The public washrooms around the rodeo grounds are, by this time every year, very bad. Without toilet paper is the best part of it and the filth is extremely disgusting. It’s hard to imagine how people can be like that. Thankfully, over at the recreation centre they have clean toilets with toilet paper (for a 50 cent fee) and well as showers ($2). That is the first stop on Sunday morning. Then walk down town, carrying our folding chairs in bags on our shoulders, and have breakfast at McGoo’s after setting our chairs up on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.

After eating it’s out to sit on the chairs and wait for the parade to start. There is a small child’s parade on Saturday, but the big parade is always on Sunday morning, and the streets are lined with crowds of people. The parade is always very well done, though this year it seemed to be a bit smaller than past years.

The end of the parade brings the walk back to the rodeo grounds and the motor home. Clean up the motor home and dispose of any and all garbage, pack our stuff, get receipts ready for the border crossing ritual, and head out. Stacey decided to stay down in Omak for a few days as she had her car and some more days off, so we said our “see ya later”s and Mike & I drove off in the motor home, headed north to the border. The line ups were incredible, but thankfully it moved through fairly quickly. We got up to and through the border crossing smoothly and with ease as always, after Mike spending ever so much time stewing and worrying about it as he always does. Not that he ever has anything to hide, but always seems to expect the worst. When he found out I had taken my laptop with me he had a conniption fit! It would serve me right if they take it away from me at the border and throw me in jail, yadda yadda, blah, blah, blah. It was similar last year when I took my spinning wheel, yet when I sat outside the motor home spinning and people came over to oooh & awww over it, he thought it was all pretty cool. I’ve learned to just keep my mouth shut and take it with my usual ease.

Once we got back to Oliver I found the pizza (that I left on the roof of the truck Friday) in the back of my truck and the box on the ground, so not sure how that happened, lol. I got all my stuff out of the motor home, had a shower, went to the gas station where Mike filled up his truck and mine, then we said our goodbyes and I headed home.

And that is not the end of the story, haha. I drove as far as Okanagan Falls and stopped to have a short look around at the big flee market they have there. I made it to about the 2nd or 3rd booth, lol. They were selling rabbits for pets and having been a rabbit breeder myself, I looked at them and started talking to the couple that runs the booth. To make a long and very enjoyable story short, it was about 3 ½ hours later when I finally got back on the road with 2 boxes of peaches, a watermelon, cucumbers, cherries and tomatoes, all that they insisted I take as the farmers market had closed by then and this was all left over goods that they didn’t want to take home.

I drove to Kelowna where I stopped at Tim Horton’s. I’d hoped to meet a fellow I’d been chatting with on MSN, but got no answer when I called the phone number he’d given me, so I had a cup of tea and a muffin before hitting to road again. While there I got a call from someone in Vernon, wanting to know where I was and when I’d be getting back… wanting to get together. Once I got back to town I spent a couple hours with him before heading home to my animals. All, especially the dog and cat, were very happy to see me… and of course, I them.

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