Lap of luxury on a Canada lake
Exploring a British Columbia waterway on an extravagantly equipped houseboat
“I need your captain and co-captain, please,” says Sharon Thomson.
I haul my friends Cheryl and Louise from in front of a mirror in Waterway Houseboats’ nautical-themed gift shop, where they’re doubled over with laughter posing in pirate and sailor caps.
After two hours of instructions and a mini test drive, Louise glides our hefty houseboat away from the dock in Sicamous, British Columbia, toward a Canadian Pacific Railway bridge that swings open to allow our three-story-tall houseboat (named Where’s My Cheque?) to pass into Shuswap Lake, where we will spend the next four days exploring over 600 miles of shoreline.
Shuswap is an H-shaped lake in the less-touristed northeastern corner of British Columbia’s Okanagan region, a 90-minute drive from the bustling wine country hub of Kelowna. Tiny Sicamous, perched on a narrow natural channel between Mara and Shuswap lakes, calls itself Canada’s Houseboat Capital and has three rental companies with 160 boats of various sizes sleeping from 10 to 30 to prove it.
Ours is a 60-foot-long, 14-foot-wide
Genesis 60 that can sleep 16, making it spacious for just four of us, including my sister Linda and two friends who made the five-hour drive up from Vancouver. As we glide toward Marble Point, our overnight destination, we prowl our floating apartment. It comes complete with a full kitchen; queen-size beds; a fireplace; a flat screen TV, satellite radio and stereo system; two barbecues to grill those trout you pull in using the fish finder; a hot tub with a wet bar on Deck 2; and a crazy spiral tube slide departing from Deck 3.
“It’s a man cave on floats,” Cheryl announces. “Some guy made a wish list of everything he wanted in life and strapped it onto two pontoons.”
Different kind of posh
While Captain Louise — with 17 years of coastal British Columbia commercial fishing experience under her belt — drives the houseboat bow-first up onto the pebble beach in early afternoon, Cheryl and I hop ashore with a sledgehammer to drive metal stakes into the ground to secure two ropes from the rear of the craft to hold it in position for the night.
We’re an active quartet of 50-somethings eager to launch our on-board toys to explore the lake’s four long, sprawling arms. Wobbling atop a standup paddleboard, I spot a small bear foraging the shore as my sister paddles a kayak alongside me. Then we join the others in the hot tub, sipping rum-laced Dark and Stormys that would became our trip’s signature cocktail, watching bald eagles soar above.
My keen-cook sister, having volunteered as voyage chef, commandeers the galley’s granite island to make dinner. The previous day we had stopped at DeMille’s Farm Market in the nearby main town of Salmon Arm for the region’s renowned local fruits and vegetables like “handsnapped asparagus” and fresh cherries.
Our next stop was Askew’s Foods grocery store, which carries over 900 local products, from cheese and charcuterie makers to artisanal bakers. We steered our overloaded cart to the checkout, informing the clerk we were houseboating. An hour before our departure the next morning, our groceries were loaded into the spacious fridge, freezer and cupboards.
It’s also possible to order online, then simply walk onto a fully stocked boat. Don’t want to cook the first night? Bahama John’s Seafood and Rib Shack in Sicamous will make sure a Southern/Bahamian meal is on board before you set sail. Several outfitters will even speedboat catered meals to you out on the water.
With fresh salmon on the grill, we crack open a frosty local Celista Ortega and watch the last rays of sun from the second deck dining table as three other boats anchor down the beach, creating a tranquil little houseboat village.
Boat as a base
Houseboating is a new activity for the four of us. and like many people we have long associated it with its 1980s and ’90s reputation for loud music and all-night stag parties. That has largely changed with a new generation of active houseboaters who don’t want to binge or sit on the boat all day.
“We can easily pick a party group, and we direct them to Neilson Beach,” Sharon had told us.
Otherwise, it’s mostly groups of families and friends coming for the solitude, spending time on the water and the many activities you can tap into by just pulling ashore. On the toy menu for hire are powerboats for water skiing and wake-boarding, fishing gear, and mountain bikes to launch on easy-access lakeside trailheads that are also perfect for hiking. You can dock at Hyde Mountain Golf Course and putt the afternoon away or scuba dive off Copper Island.
Houseboat weddings are on the rise as are annual events like multiday salmon-viewing floats during spawning season in the famed Adams River, and mushroom hunting and cooking classes during a local Fungi Festival in September.
Whitecap wind stirred up overnight, making our 19-mile cruise to the region’s main town of Salmon Arm (population 18,000) a slow sail in our bulky houseboat the next morning.
Louise mutters through clenched teeth as she coaxes Where’s My Cheque? into the Salmon Arm Wharf. “It’s like steering a cardboard box with a toothbrush.”
A short stroll and we’re on the main streets of this folksy town, dropping in at the art gallery, boutiques and secondhand bookstores before settling into lunch at the Shuswap Pie Company that was justifiably featured on the Food Network’s “You Gotta Eat Here” for its made-fromscratch pies like steak and
stout using organic Back Hand of God Stout brewed by Crannóg Ales in nearby Sorrento. Dessert is luscious local fruit pie, cherry and peach.
Afterward, Byron Noble of Noble Tours whisks us off in a van for an afternoon of tastings at some of the region’s half dozen little-known wineries that are North America’s most northerly, offering cool-climate white wines, including Ortega, Siegerrebe, White Bacchus and Kerner, and reds including locally grown Marechal Foch. We sip our way from the Swiss familyrun Larch Hills to Sunnybrae with its views and vintage photos of the family’s five generations of local farming, stocking up along the way.
Then we pop in to sample cheeses on the farm at Grass Root dairy before finishing up at the stylish log winery of Recline Ridge, which scooped 24 medals in Northwest wine competitions in 2014. The winery is actually accessible by houseboat, just a short walk up a hill from the beach.
Leisurely exploring
The next morning, the lake is a millpond as we head eastward, past a community called Canoe and across Salmon Arm to Herald Provincial Park. Dropping stakes, we brew a second cup of coffee before hiking amid cedar and firs and old downed trees lying scattered like mossy pickup sticks, until we reach the bridal-veil spray of Margaret Falls.
Herald Park is one of many spots where you can hook into 103 hiking and mountain biking routes that cover a network of more than 500 miles of trails overseen by the Shuswap Trail Alliance, accessible by houseboat from lakeside trailheads.
After spreading a lunch of local goodies on a picnic table overlooking the lake, watching kayaks paddle by and snow geese pass overhead on a major migratory flyway, Louise lets loose three blasts of the horn as we back offshore and sail again. Houseboating is slow cruising at a leisurely top speed of 4 mph. We pass waterfront cottages, coves, beaches and lighthouses at the base of rocky cliffs with hidden petroglyphs.
As we approach Cinnemousun Narrows where the four arms of the lake meet, a floating corner store awaits those who crave a slice of hot pizza or need to stock up on supplies or kitschy souvenirs. We pass through the Narrows, make a left turn up and prowl the waterfront, choosing our own private beach on Wild Rose Bay. We work the water slide until we’re dizzy from spinning, then light a beach fire after dinner.
I swim before breakfast, paddle before lunch and suntan the afternoon away on the top deck. We watch ospreys overhead and a beaver swimming in the lake. Sizable trout leap clear of the water, and we regret not having rods. No one has pulled in alongside us, and we see only distant houseboats chugging on the lake. We’re grateful we came in June — shoulder season, which, along with May and September, is quieter, with fewer houseboats and powerboats than high summer season in July and August.
In late afternoon we once again pull up stakes and putter off on our floating cottage ... with a different view every day.