Kettle River RV Camp & Mt Beautiful Hike

Hi everyone. Good morning. So we're here at Kettle River Recreation Area and it's part of the BC Parks system. So we got a reservation when reservations first opened and it's a rainy weekend but we are just wandering about on the hillside here across the river from our campsite. Yeah we came in yesterday. It was very wet when we left the Vancouver area. Rained pretty much the whole way. Heavy rain in a couple of cases. Still it was a nice drive. And then as we finally got into the Okanagan and nearer Soyuz the sky started to clear up and we could see some blue sky. And then we got in here and it was what about 24 degrees. Sunny. A little bit of cloud in the sky but mostly sun. Got a great campsite. Probably you know less than a minute walk to the river which is really high. We'll put in some clips from the when we were here last year. We didn't camp here last year. We just stopped by but the river is incredibly high compared to last year. And we had a great night. We had a fire. We ate outside. Temperature was I don't know stayed at least 20 until probably 10 o'clock at night so it was really nice. Very comfortable in the van. Yeah and then about five this morning we could hear that clink clink clink clink clink on the metal roof of the van and it started to rain and it's kept raining since. Then the other thing last week we actually skipped van life for a week and did a hike up a mountain called Mount Beautiful. At least that's one of the names. It has a couple of names. I think there's three names. Yeah so we went up we went up Mount Beautiful. Beautiful hike. It was kind of cloudy when we started but we hit the sun at the top finally. Clouds are rolling over the mountains and then eventually the wonderful views opened up. Fun thing about that hike is it's about four kilometers that's relatively flat and then five kilometers almost straight up and then in our case straight back down. It was very steep and our legs were not used to that kind of steepness. Yeah so it was total length of the day is probably something like I don't know 18 and a half kilometers and you gain somewhere around I think 1150 meters so what's that about 3800 3900 feet so a good day. Not a super hard day but we hadn't done something that steep since probably last summer. Speak for yourself. It was a super hard day for me. So we'll put that in at the end of today's video. So hope you enjoy our trip here to the Kettle Valley and I hope you enjoy our hike to Mount Beautiful as well. We're just getting everything set up right now. Mickey's getting ready to do some dinner. Chairs out. Our flat pack grill. We're going to do dinner on this tonight. Kept it on the gravel just so we don't anyway burn the nice picnic table that's here. Just got a fire started mostly just to get some smoke because there's a lot of bugs here. It's a nice isolated spot but we're just literally one minute of that from the river but it's kind of buggy. We're going to walk a little bit more over here and then we'll probably walk a little bit more on the Kettle Valley Rail Trail which goes through this park and continues on in both directions. It's really better designed I think for a bicycle. So if you have a mountain bike or some sort of hybrid bike I think it'd be a great trip to ride on. You could ride like almost forever. Miles and miles and miles. Yeah a lot of fun. Okay so we're back on the Kettle Valley Railway Trail and we're going to just wander down a little bit in that direction. That's the actual park boundary and then the Kettle Valley Trail continues on. See again how high the river is. Now we're on the other side of the bridge we're walking north this time on the outskirts of the campground. So we came up here a little ways but the trail just keeps going going flat along the river around that way. If we weren't completely soaked we'd probably go a little bit further or if the weather was nicer and dry up in the van. Lots of first come first serve sites for free right now. Just warming up some good pea soup for lunch. It's good for a rainy day. It's just supposed to rain all day today and all night so we're gonna be stuck in the van anyway so we thought we'd get moving a little bit. We're gonna check out the Boundary Creek Campground. We passed by it last time and it looked quite small but we didn't actually go inside. Actual sites. Yeah. All first come first serve. Yeah they're quite nice. You're right on the creek. Obviously not very busy today. Pretty close to the highway. Water, two toilets, and garbage and recycling. It's a good place to spend the night. Actually if you like the creek you can. It's probably worth a couple of days but it's certainly a nice overnight stop for a drink. Yeah. Some blue sky. It appears to happen quite often the day we leave. It gets nice looking at the beautiful wild rose bushes. Really nice fragrance. I wish you guys could smell it. We just stopped here at Manning Park for a quick lunch and it's almost sunny and then we'll head back into the Lower Mainland shortly. So despite all the rain we really enjoyed our stay at Kittle River Recreation Area. Yeah it was nice. I mean the first day we arrived it was actually really warm and very pleasant and then we of course got rain for all the following two days. Yeah the site that we were in was private. It was nice. It was a little buggy because it was in the trees but of course it didn't really matter because we spent a lot of time in the van. It was raining a lot but at least we were able to get out for breakfast this morning and enjoy the quiet and the bird calls. We really liked the area. I can see it's very busy at that park in the summer because you've got the river, you've got the rail trail where you can literally go for days on a bicycle trip if that's what you want. It's a very popular spot but it was very nice. So you can see the power lines here but we're going to get to the end and head up there. Actually we'll probably get up into the gap between that peak and then the ridge over here. I'm going up a route called Swan Falls. Sunny in the city and you still have clouds up here in the mountains. That trail is just relentless. It's steep. So I think we finished the relentless steep bits and the forest ahead of us isn't too bad. About a thousand meters? Yeah I think when we're done we'll have gained something like a thousand meters. We're almost at the call between the two peaks. I think it's probably 15-20 minutes but fortunately it's all locked in above us. I think it's hoping to clear up. I'm not holding my breath. You can just see straight ahead. I think that's Coquitlam Lake but it's all fogged in. Coquitlam Lake. Peaks still kind of covered in cloud or we can look back at Vancouver. Hard choice. Both beautiful. Veggie dip. Homemade hummus. And vegan chicken strips. And oops it's starting to rain again. It's nice and flat. I hope that you enjoyed our trip from the week before where we went up Mount Beautiful. That day started also with some weather that didn't look that good but then it turned into a great day. So we hope you enjoyed this video and if you did please be sure to give us a thumbs up and be sure to subscribe if you haven't done so already. So we'll see you next time. Till next time.