Our Excellent Houseboat Adventure

In British Columbia, when you mention houseboats, it almost always means house boating on Shuswap Lake. During the peak of summer, there will be hundreds of houseboats on the lake as it’s a very popular vacation pastime. Our first and only other time that we experienced house boating was in 1995 with Peter, Liz, my sister Wendy, her husband Ray and my niece and nephew Erin and Patrick. We had a lot of fun on the houseboat back then and we’re surprised that it’s taken over 15 years to do it again.

A few months ago, Liz told us that her sisters (and their husbands) had booked a houseboat for early September and that there was a spot available for Barb and me if we were interested. We didn’t have to think about it very long before we jumped at the chance.

Renting a houseboat is somewhat like renting a motor home but the major difference is that, unlike a motor home, the “driver” can step away from the wheel every now and then on the houseboat. Houseboats travel so slowly and the lake is so big that you don’t need to be at the wheel every second as you’re not in danger of hitting anything or crashing the vast majority of the time.

Shuswap Lake is about a 6-hour drive from Vancouver and many of the house boating companies are located in the small town of Sicamous, which is the south shore of the lake. Shuswap Lake is shaped roughly like an “H” and subsequently there a four sections or “arms” to the lake. This unique shape means that over the several days that you are renting the houseboat you can travel the length of many parts of the lake and rarely see the same areas twice. Also, even though there are so many houseboats (during the peak summer season), the large size of the lake gives you plenty of room to find places to navigate where you are not seeing too many other boats.

The main criteria for having an enjoyable time on a houseboat is that everyone on the boat must be fairly compatible and can have fun together. Since you’re spending a lot of time together in close quarters, it can very easily turn out to be a big problem if people have widely different interests or just don’t get along. In this respect, we were well-equipped. Both of Liz’s sisters (and their husbands) were all great and we all got along well. About the only complaint was that we only had a four-day houseboat rental and not a full week. Four days really went by really quickly and before we knew it we were heading back to Sicamous to drop off the houseboat and the long drive home.

Barb and I have already talked about wanting to go on another houseboat adventure again. We’re not sure when this will happen but we know for sure that it won’t take 16 years to get back to Shuswap.

The photos from our Houseboat Adventure can be found on my photo website here.

Baden