Kelowna Parks Challenge Trip #8
This post is part two of two. Read Part One here.
Recently, as part of my Kelowna Parks Challenge, I went for a walk with my wife, Jen, from Kelowna General Hospital south to the Hotel Eldorado. On the way, we visited ten parks!
In my post on Part One of this trip, I described the first five parks. In this post, I’ll describe the other five, including, Gyro Beach and Rotary Beach.
Watt Park
Watt Park is a neighbourhood park that runs northwest to southeast between Watt Road and Fascieux Creek. It is a park of two sides. On one side, the city has allowed a few metres of riparian vegetation to grow beside the creek, creating precious wetland habitat. On the other side, the park consists of a wide strip of grass with a few trees.
Maybe it was due to late summer rain, or maybe it was due to the park’s site beside the creek, near the creek’s mouth, not far from the lakeshore, on a historic floodplain, but the ground under the grass was very wet and soft during our visit. I don’t know how this park is generally used by its neighbours, but it seems to me it might be better to let the creekside ecosystem take over more of the park’s area than to take care of a lawn that few humans are using.
Based on the city’s Future Use Map, it looks like they would ultimately like to assemble a large park from the mouth of Fascieux Creek north. Perhaps Watt Park will eventually be joined up with that future park.
Washrooms and Drinking Fountains: There are no drinking fountains in this park. There is no washroom in this park.
Dog Rules: Dogs are allowed in this park, but only on-leash.
Watt Road Beach Access
This park has a classic well-developed beach access look. After visiting Cedar Avenue and Meikle Avenue beach accesses earlier in the day, it was nice to see this return to form. With trees, a playground, a picnic table and a wide beach, this park would be a lovely place to spend a beach day.
This park is also just a block or so from the much busier Gyro Beach, and provides a great alternative destination for those in the neighbourhood that want a quieter, more intimate beach experience.
Washrooms and Drinking Fountains: There are no drinking fountains in this park. There is a portable washroom here, by the fence.
Dog Rules: Because this is a beach, dogs are not allowed in this park.
Boyce-Gyro Park
This major park is the site of Gyro Beach, one of the best and most popular beaches in Kelowna. Surrounded by vacation homes and B&Bs, this park has a lot of fun amenities for visitors. In addition to a playground, washrooms and concession, there are beach volleyball courts, all-weather table tennis tables, and a swimming loop marked with buoys.
The city would like to extend the Waterfront Walkway linear park all the way from Knox Mountain to Mission Creek, but other than downtown most of that is not in place. In Boyce-Gyro Park, however, the waterfront path is wide and beautiful, decisively delineating the border between beach and parkland.
Washrooms and Drinking Fountains: This park has both a drinking fountain and large washroom building. Both are located on the north side of the park.
Dog Rules: Dogs are allowed on leash in this park, but only on paths and trails.
Rotary Beach Park
Just a couple of blocks down Lakeshore Road from Gyro Beach, Rotary Beach provides an interesting contrast. Similar in size, it has a more laid-back feel. Here there is no paved path separating the sand and the grass. Unlike the undeniable destination quality of Gyro Beach, this beach felt more like a friendly, neighbourhood park, reminding me of Sutherland Bay Park or Strathcona Beach Park.
Nevertheless, there are amenities here, including a playground and a semi-covered picnic area. This park is also home to Okanagan Beach Rentals, where you can rent paddle-boats and other water sports equipment.
Washrooms and Drinking Fountains: There is no drinking fountain in this park. There is a public washroom building here, near the beach rentals hut.
Dog Rules: Because this is a beach, dogs are not allowed in this park.
Cook Road Boat Launch
We left Rotary Beach by a narrow waterfront path and made our way south across the mouth of Wilson Creek and onto the boardwalk that lines the Manteo Resort and the Hotel Eldorado. On the south side of the hotel, we came to the Cook Road Boat Launch.
This is the third public boat launch I’ve visited so far, and though I am not a boat owner myself, I noticed some differences between this one and the Water Street Boat Launch, which I visited during my first parks challenge adventure.
Though both launches are sited near establishments that boat owners might frequent (viz. the yacht club and the Eldorado Marina), the Cook Road launch seems a little fancier. For one, it comes with an enormous parking lot with boat-size parking spaces, and for another, it has valet service. As you can see from my photo, a valet with an aqua-dolly will lift your boat into and out of the water, saving you the trouble of backing your vehicle and trailer down the ramp and winching it out yourself.
Washrooms and Drinking Fountains: There is no drinking fountain in this park. There is a washroom building in this park, at the north end of the parking lot.
Dog Rules: Because this is simply a parking lot and a ramp, dogs are not allowed in this park.
Reflections
History
All of the land we travelled through on this half of the trip, and much of the first half, is on the shore of Okanagan Lake. This means that for most of the last ten thousand years it was marshy land that used to flood every spring when the lake filled up.
After a particularly deep flood in 1948, infrastructure was built at the south end of the lake to regulate the water level, so the lakeshore will never again flood like it used to. Nevertheless, as anyone who remembers 2017 can attest, floods are still possible.
Whenever I travel to the lakeshore, and particularly when I visit places like Watt Park, near the mouth of Fascieux Creek, I think of the natural benefits of annual flooding, and what parks like Maude Roxby Wetland and Rotary Marsh are doing to accommodate it. I feel like more could be done, even though it will not soon again be the case that the entire waterfront is marsh. Many local plant and animal communities would thank us for it if they were sentient enough to feel gratitude.
Future Development
Our adventure this day took us along or past five of the city’s proposed linear parks, each of which is in a different state of completion.
Most of our walk was along the Abbott Street Recreation Corridor. South of Rose Avenue, this trail is not developed as a full active transportation corridor (ie. with separated bike lanes), but it is a well-labelled biking route. We ended up using it for most of our journey because the trail to the west, the Waterfront Walkway, is still comprised of disjointed fragments.
On this trip, we used the Gyro Beach fragment of that trail, as well as the Rotary Beach to the Hotel Eldorado fragment. I look forward to the development of more sections of this ambitious city-long project.
In the first half of this trip, we made use of the westernmost section of the West Avenue Park to Gordon trail, which comprises the charming Abbott Park, while in the second half we passed one end of the Wilson Creek Linear Park, which I hope to explore in the future.
Conclusions
Out ramblings have now taken us almost as far south as Mission Creek, and I am fascinated to find out what magical realms lie beyond. We ended this trip in a very different place than we began, travelling from the funky suburban village of South Pandosy to a tourist-oriented land of vacation resorts and valet boating.
I have now visited forty-five out of 203 parks in sixty-two days. That means I have seen 22% of the parks in Kelowna in 17% of the year, so I am still on track to succeeding at my challenge.
I hope you enjoyed reading about my adventure. Leave me a comment if you have any questions or reactions, or if you know anything about the parks we saw.
