Have you been staying at home as much as possible due to the pandemic? Have you been nervous about visiting recently re-opened parks due to the fact that they are also being visited by other people? I have, too, but visiting parks safely can be done. I promise! Keep reading and I’ll tell you about two successful park visits I recently made with my family. Hopefully, they will inspire you to plan equally successful trips in your local area.
My Quarantine
For the past month and a half I have not been going on as many walks. As you know if you read my previous post, once the first wave of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic started to peak, I suspended my Kelowna Parks Challenge out of an abundance of caution. Also, following the precautionary principle, I self-isolated with my family. We were happy to stay at home as much as possible since it made scientific sense to us.
During isolation, however, certain anxieties developed. Perhaps you can relate. Despite logic and assurances from public health professionals, it started to seem safer to avoid going outside altogether. After all, if the virus is invisible and can be passed on by asymptomatic carriers, how can you ever feel truly safe going anywhere another person might be? Combined with the authorities’ sensible plea not to unwittingly spread the virus to nearby communities, the situation led to a serious curtailment of our recreational activities. The few walks we took in April were all within a couple of blocks of our house and usually well after dark.
Moving Forward
That said, as of last week the Province of BC has moved into Phase 2 of its reopening plan, which includes the reopening of parks. As a result, I do not only feel less guilty about visiting them, but I also feel less guilty about encouraging that behaviour online. I still don’t want to encourage people to travel outside their local area, but I think it’s okay to celebrate Kelowna’s public greenspaces again.
With all that in mind, I want to share with you two recent trips I took with my family. We chose less well-known destinations with pandemic-friendly features. They allowed us to get out and enjoy what we could of this quickly-passing springtime and encouraged us to get out more often in the future.
Bella Vista Park
Last week, we travelled to Bella Vista Park on Kirschner Mountain. I discovered this park in March as part of the Kelowna Parks Challenge. In my opinion, it has one of the best views in Kelowna. Looking west from the top of the park, you can see over the benches to Okanagan Lake and West Kelowna beyond. Looking outside my cocoon of quarantine anxiety, it is clear that this spring is as vibrant and glorious as any other. After all, humans are only one species on this planet and the rest of nature doesn’t care that ours is the one currently having a pandemic.
There were only a couple of other visitors to the park during our trip, and they appeared to be there for the view, too. Other than myself, I saw no one climbing up and down the steep trail that connects the upper and lower parts of the park. Needless to say, the lovely playground was still closed. All in all, this was a great opportunity to see the arrow-leaf balsamroot in flower and to visit a great view. My whole family felt nourished and refreshed by this trip. The improvement it made in our collective mental health was starkly obvious.
Directions: Bella Vista Park is located at 2342 Loseth Road. Get there by turning south on Loseth from Highway 33, then following it across Gopher Creek and up onto Kirschner Mountain.
Still Pond Park
This week, we took a walk in a lovely park I discovered last December. In the Glenmore Highlands, two small mountain lakes, Still Pond and Walroy Lake, have been preserved as part of the Wilden development. A path has been laid along their eastern shores, connecting the two with a lovely, easy trail. This was a great place to come these days for two reasons. Firstly, though beautiful and large, this is not yet a famous destination park. In fact, it feels more like a neighbourhood amenity. Secondly, the paths are two metres wide, giving us enough room to safely distance ourselves from anyone we passed.
My last trip to this park was my first Challenge trip in the snow, so I delighted in the contrasts I saw now that it’s the height of spring. In particular, many wildflowers (and a conspicuous volunteer lilac) were in bloom. We especially enjoyed seeing ducklings as well as the many, many painted turtles that lined the logs along the lake edge, sunning themselves and sometimes swimming.
Directions: Still Pond Park can be accessed from the south via the cul-de-sac at the north end of Still Pond Place. From Union Road, turn east onto Long Ridge Drive then left onto Still Pond Place. From the north, you can access the trail via a walkway that starts opposite Hidden Lake Park, at the intersection of Long Ridge Drive and Hidden Lake Place.
Conclusion
All in all, these outings worked as I had planned. They got us out of the house and made us feel better. I successfully chose parks with few other viewers and features like wide paths that made us less anxious about physical distancing. Though we did see and pass other park visitors, our general anxiety about visiting parks was still greatly reduced from what it was in early April. I believe these experiences will lead to more daytime outings for us. Hopefully, if you can follow these principles in your area, you will have success as well.
It also, of course, got me thinking about when to restart the stopwatch on my Kelowna Parks Challenge. Now that I’m not worried about encouraging people to leave their neighbourhoods, I’m ready to get out and explore the rest of the city’s parks. My main challenge, now, is that some of the remaining parks have narrow paths and others, like Knox Mountain, are very popular. There hasn’t been a time in the last two months when I’ve driven by the parking lot at the base of Knox Mountain and not seen it full. The city has even opened an overflow parking lot there. It would be an understatement to say that I worry about the possibility of absolute physical distancing in a situation like that.
Nevertheless, planning is underway. You can be assured you will hear about it when my personal perambulations resume. Until then, I hope you are finding safe ways to walk when and where possible. May getting outside support your mental health the way it has supported ours.
