E.C. Manning Provincial Park

Highway 3 is the one that feels home to me, the one I crossed on my way to school for a full year on a daily basis.   It curls through my beloved Kootenays. But first we were heading for the touristic warm Okanogan. Once you leave the Fraser valley, one must choose a direction: the Transcanada highway 1 turns north first, and then Highway 5 goes north while Hwy 3, the Crowsnest highway, follows the American border. 

As soon as you reach Hope, you are back in the mountains and the highway becomes a pleasure again, away from the busy urbanization.  We also noticed the first smoke small near Hope, the first sensory awareness of the many forest fires in the country.   Later that day we'd drive over the re-opened Hwy3 just before Osoyoos when arriving in the Okanogan where just a week before the Eagle Buff fire required part of Osoyoos to be evacuated.  Fortunately, that fire got under control rather quickly and would not impact our trip anymore.  But before we'd arrive there, we had to meander through the Cascade Mountain range.  E.C. Manning Provincial park covers a big area in this mountain range, so we dedicated time today to have a stop and explore.  The mountain's heights would also promise us some nice cooler weather before we'd hit the big heat in the coming days. 

The park's ranger at the information centre tipped us to go on the Three Falls hike (9km round trip).  Since these trails were not open yet when we visited previously in spring time, we were eager to go out and explore.  The park was quite busy as there would be an ultra run the next day so all campgrounds were full and there were signs everywhere. But quickly our trail turned off, and we were on solitary grounds. 

We walked via the Alpine meadows, passing the ski hill onto a trail descending further and further into the woods and across rock slides to the view of several falls. We didn't see 3, but only 2, although we heard the water flowing all the time.  Then we had to return to our steps and I cursed at Jan's speed to climb back up. 

Then we went to the Lightning Lake day use area to have our lunch picknick.  In 2015 I called it the squirrel walhalla but this time each table was taken and a lot of people were escaping the heat at the lake and not a squirrel was to be seen.  But even without squirrels, this was surely a very gorgeous lunch spot to be found in the area.