Shannon Ainslie

1 week ago | infotel.ca | Shannon Ainslie

Known for its deep blue to turquoise and green water colour, Kalamalka Lake along Highway 97 between Vernon and Oyama offers activities for everyone to enjoy. The lake is within the Kalamalka Provincial Park and Protected Area, a natural grassland in the District of Coldstream and is open all season long. Not only is the area home to an abundance of flora and fauna to observe, it offers recreational activities from hiking to swimming, to paddling and fishing.

1 week ago | infotel.ca | Shannon Ainslie

A three-minute aerial video aptly captures the uniquely dry and desolate landscape that stretches out along the Thompson River between Kamloops and Cache Creek. The video takes viewers for a gentle ride above the slate blue Thompson River while a long, snaking CP Rail train pulls its colourful carts through the barren landscape.

1 week ago | infotel.ca | Shannon Ainslie

Sharp-tailed grouse have arguably one of the most entertaining courtship rituals to watch for every spring as the males dance and duke it out to attract the females. The males raise their pointed tails to the sky, stamp their feet to make a drumming sound and inflate bright purple sacs on their necks to coo at the females. Then they bend down low before leaping into the air and attacking competing males, appearing vicious.

1 week ago | infotel.ca | Shannon Ainslie

Nestled in the Lac du Bois grasslands northeast of Kamloops is a pile of huge boulders with odd, wobbly shapes and pitted with deep dark holes. For hikers following along a trail through long grass and conifer trees, the boulders appear suddenly, despite their massive sizes, on a bench on a hill called the Garden of the Trolls. "Faces appear in the boulders," reads an excerpt from Kamloops Backcountry Hikes by local author and adventurer Al Budreau.

1 week ago | infotel.ca | Shannon Ainslie

It’s tick season in Kamloops and the Okanagan and the critters are climbing up pant legs and burrowing into hairy places in large numbers. The tiny parasitic arachnids need blood to complete their life cycles and bury their heads under the skin of mammals, birds and reptiles to get it. They can’t be felt when walking up a body or when they bite, and their flat, tough bodies make them difficult to kill, which is enough to give some people a case of the heebie-jeebies.