Part 1: Princeton and beyond. Hiking, goldminers, and ghost towns.

I had to google Princeton to find out where the hell I was going and I swear the computer laughed at me when I later typed in 'Things to do in Princeton' but I was determined to have an adventure of some sort while I was there for eight days so started the preparation several days before I flew out by digging out my camping gear and packing it along with my normal travelling stuff.

I flew into Vancouver and then hopped on a smaller plane for the hour flight to Penticton BC, a neat town nestled between a couple of lakes in the Okinawan Valley between the Cascade and Columbia Mountain ranges and also sits at the northern edge of the Great Basin Desert. I've always wanted to spend some time in a desert (not in a biblical 40 years of wandering sense, or eek out a living in Afghanistan while dodging Taliban and  hyaenas in the sand sense either) so I couldn't wait to land and get out on the road to my final destination and see what there was to see. I always get a bit of an adrelin rush when I'm about to get to new place and i had a feeling this was going to be an exciting week.

 Princeton is about 150 kilometers from Penticton through the eastern ridges of the Cascade Mountains and I would be following the Trans-Can highway along the Similkameen River most of the way, from the very start of the trip I was already gawking at the landscape around me.

By the time I was on the road out of Penticton the sun was getting lower in the sky and I 'wowed' to myself as I caught it setting again and again. Driving the narrow curved highway through the mountain hills and valleys I watched it fall behind different horizons over and over. Road sign warnings for possible rock slides/avalanches and mountain goat crossings were new to me as were the straight down for hundreds of meters edges of the highway that was carved out the solid granite mountains. It was a pretty amazing drive that had some nerve wracking moments as the sky got blacker and my knuckles got whiter and by the time I reached my hotel I was a bit of a wreck.

The hotel, to be as polite, gracious and as non-elitist as possible, was a shithole, a 50 year old motor inn that had never been renovated even after the Sandman group bought it and stuck their name on the sign. I don't expect luxury accommodations when I'm on the road  (although I have charmed my way into car and hotel upgrades from coast to coast) but I do need an appropriate place to stay when I'm expected to look and feel like a professional in the morning, this place took two days to locate an iron and never was able to supply an ironing board. The night desk attendant was friendly, if not helpful, and I was glad I didn't prejudge him even though he checked me in wearing a badly stained white tank top and cutoff jean shorts.

My room was a joke. A twin bed and an antique kitchenette that I would've been scared to use even if I had food to prepare, which I didn't as the town closed down at 5 in the afternoon, several hours before my arrival. I spent the evening chasing flies around the room with the rolled up hotel 'service guide' and then went to bed early after retrieving my sleeping bag from my backpack in the car rather than crawling under the sheets provided for me.

After work the next day, I wandered around the town a bit, looking for excitement and finding none. Princeton was a gold mining town, a hundred years ago. Today its a town of about 2500 residents, I think they included wildlife n the census count as I saw as many deer in town as I did people. I'm thinking the ancient miners, their rancher friends and their stay at home offspring don't need entertainment because quite obviously none was being provided. The town was small, very small.. and in the middle of a desert.

But I found an oasis.

I walked into The Brown Bridge Pub about a half a kilometer down the highway my second night in town. It was the only place I saw in four days that looked even remotely appealing to eat in, or for that matter, to even sit in. A polished bar, big screen TVs, young folk. Like I said, an oasis the desert. I spent the next few hours drinking pints of Granville Island pale ale and eating nachos with some of the locals. Sitting next to me was a guy that I ending up having several dinners next to over the next week, we chatted about baseball and hockey and then 'the' game came on. Every TV was turned to the NFL game and the whole place watched, intently. Green Bay somethings against some other team. I know nothing about NFL, not interested in the least. But I am good at talking about stuff I know little or nothing about and had a good time picking apart defensive schemes and yelling at the refs..umps..linesman..whatever. The other great thing that came out of the night was I got a chance to chat with a guy that worked in the kitchen about hiking in the area. He was an avid hiker and gave me some really key knowledge and ideas about what I could do with my three days that I would have alone in town before my team arrived.