A Walk Through Hardy Falls Regional Park

Springtime in the Okanagan Valley is simply delightful. We are in the town of Peachland, appropriately named because this is in the middle of Canada's fruit growing region. The weather here is some of, if not the best in all of Canada. Located less than one hundred kilometers from the state of Washington, Peachland is near the small city of Kelowna, British Columbia.

There are many trails in the region. We chose this one because it is a stream with trout, salmon and there is a waterfall. As you can see, it is nothing special. The creek was pretty, the day was just perfect but the waterfall wasn't that impressive. This is Canada afterall, we have thousands of better waterfalls, especially in the Rocky Mountains.

Kokanee Salmon breed in this stream, making it very special. These salmon are sort of like trout, they spend their entire lives in freshwater. Some geological event happened many years in the past, trapping these salmon in the freshwater. They now spend their entire life in Okanagan lake and the surrounding streams never going to the ocean, because they can't, or maybe they just don't want to.

The trail is short and just goes from a parking lot near the lake to the falls. It is just to protect the waterstream for the fish. There's a website for this six hectare park and it includes an interactive map. If you happened to get lost on this one kilometer extremely well marked gravel lined path, you are either blind or ate some of the blue cap mushrooms growing in the the neary forests inland temperate rainforests.

It is wheelchair friendly, there are benches every hundred or so feet and there is ample parking. This is an excessively well maintained park. Something tells me the Okanagan Valley gets a lot of revenue from the wineries and adventure tourism.

The area can get a little dry as it is in a rain shadow so they have to remind people not to have fires in the park, not that there is anywhere appropriate here to have a fire. The Kelowna area has had some bad forest fires in recent years and it is one of the only downsides of this natural paradise.

Thank you for reading and have a nice Easter Weekend. All the photos were taken with an s22 and are unfiltered.