OKANAGAN VALLEY - British Columbia: Including the Alaska Highway - page 361

including a rattlesnake show-and-talk. Walking trails lead through the desert to viewpoints
and past various native structures, all with interpretive panels.
Desert Centre
Across the lake from Nk'Mip, a 100-hectare (250-acre) “pocket desert” has the distinction
of being Canada's driest spot, receiving less than 300 millimeters (11 inches) of precip-
itation annually. It is a desert in the truest sense, complete with sand, cacti, prickly pear,
sagebrush, lizards, scorpions, rattlesnakes, and other desert dwellers, including 23 inverteb-
rates found nowhere else in the world. Learn more about this unique landscape at the Desert
Centre (250/495-2470 or 877/899-0897, 10am-2pm daily late April-early Oct., adult $7,
senior $6 and child $5), a research and interpretive facility where a boardwalk leads through
this very un-Canadian environment. To get there, follow Highway 97 north from Osoyoos
and take 146th Avenue west.