"Not our nicest town"

Kamloops, BC - Standing on the tee box on the 13^th hole at Tobiano on Sunday, we chatted with a couple of guys from Vancouver, who like us, were waiting for the backlog of golf foursomes to clear the teebox and the first landing area before teeing off.   As usual, we exchanged “where are you froms” and talked about the golf games to come and those just past. 

“Kamloops isn’t one of our best towns,” one of the men warned us, when we explained that we were staying in Kamloops and making it the central location for our five-day golf vacation.  With that warning in mind, we drove into Kamloops after our round, a little leery about what we’d find.

I expected a boarded up downtown, like those we’ve become used to in mid-sized towns in the Midwest, where strip malls and WalMarts have replaced downtown shopping districts.  But, to our surprise, downtown Kamloops was bustling.  Partly, that was due to the Jehovah’s Witness convention that was just letting out of the downtown convention center as we were arriving.  But, even without the extra folks dressed in their Sunday best wandering out of the big hall to their cars, the town was apparently more than surviving.  We walked past several restaurants and shops on the main street, an old, historic hotel and a historical museum, all open on Sunday as a regular practice.  We stopped at Kelly O’Bryan’s, a typical Irish pub and restaurant, for dinner, and the place was jammed.

 After that nice surprise, we drove out of town, and Ben discovered his “Big Letdown.”  Canada might be a nice place, but it’s also a place where beer costs $15 an eight-pack (yes, eight, not six) for Molson Canadia – a regular lager along the lines of Coors or Miller.  Obviously, Ben couldn’t live here – at least not on his salary.