Raven 1542 - Big White, we're here...

Day 4, Feb 6th

Well we have finally arrived in Big White to a day of great snow.

The day started with breakfast at Denny's which was located in the hotel. I grabbed a shot of 'The Gang'...

It had just started to snow lightly in Kelowna as we went down for breakfast, but by the time the last of the toast was eaten and the coffee spilt down my shirt, the snow had started to pick up. We checked out of the hotel, leaving our bags locked in a storage room and headed to the mall for a few things and the girls were off to the supermarket for the 10 days supplies for 'The Gang'...

Casey and Diane bought some underwear at Sears before Diane headed off to 'Save on Foods' to meet Lorraine, Brenda and Karmen for the monster grocery shop. After a while the rest of us headed out of the mall and went to see how the grocery shop was progressing. The walk across the carpark in between malls was made in heavier snowfalls, but it was a very pretty scene for us Aussies and the kids were loving it...

When we arrived at the supermarket, the girls had been going for around 40 minutes and were in aisle 2!!!! I made a call to the shuttle driver about the possibility of delaying our Kelowna departure for an hour. I wasn't confident because the previous evening I saw his runsheet when we confirmed a pickup time, it was quite a printed list. I was worried he had passengers to take back down the mountain from Big White. Fortunately it wasn't a problem and we pushed the time back an hour.

We left the girls and headed for the most important shop of the lot, BC Liquor. We walked out of there $800 poorer, but we won't go thirsty..lol. By the time we left the grog shop it was now snowing heavy. Clive and I decided it best to leave Darren and Casey behind with the kids and the grog and head off to the hotel about 200m away to load up the shuttle. We packed the bags in the van's luggage compartment and headed off to pickup the rest of the gang. First stop was the grog shop and the kids and then down to the supermarket for the girls. The girls greeted us outside with about 7 full trolleys of supplies and three of them holding out the receipt which was about 2 metres long...lol. Lorraine said the guys in the shop told them it was the second biggest shop on record, just over $1700.

The shopping bags were all loaded onto the front 4 seats of the shuttle and finally we were on our way up the mountain...

We arrived in Big White and started the unloading process. Because the shuttle was so big, it couldn't fit into the garage at the unloading spot. This meant we had to park just outside the roll-a-door and form a line to unload. Here is where I had my first real experience of 'Okanagan Champagne Powder'. When I jumped off the shuttle, I landed right on the edge of the driveway and fell into about 12 inches of powder.. and I mean powder!! It just blew off my hands as if it wasn't there. When we were last in Canada, the locals were moaning about the snow quality the whole 10 days we were here. We thought it was great, but with that one single tumble when I finally arrived back again, I instantly could understand what their problem was. The lift in the building is quite large and we finally got everything into the unit after about 30 minutes, which wasn't too bad when you consider everything we bought up. Needless to say, if the lift wasn't working we would have been in some strife. Here are the supplies loaded onto the tables...

...that should keep us going for a while.

We ordered in pizza for dinner and headed off to bed in preparation for the big week and a bit ahead. With our arrival being too late to make the rental shop or anything, it is all a bit up in the air what tomorrow will bring, but one thing is for sure, the snow gods are on our side, it is still throwing it down outside and when things fine up in a day or two it will be sensational.

Later...