Visitors to the Rockies are familiar with Kamloops, the third-largest city in British Columbia, as they often spend a night there.

But Kamloops, in the province’s interior, is well worth a much longer stay. The city offers visitors a host of family activities all year round, not to mention breathtaking natural beauty, including 1,000 lakes where holidaying families can be assured that the fish will be biting!

Kamloops is known as the “Tournament Capital of Canada.” Four major highways – the Trans-Canada, Yellowhead, Coquihalla and Highway 97 – lead many sports teams to the city. Kamloops is a four-hour drive from Vancouver and seven from Calgary.

The city offers full-service air and rail connections, which comes in handy when the city puts on events that attract people from all parts of the globe.

The Kamloops Festival of the Performing Arts runs for about three weeks commencing the third week in February. The film festival and the Kamloops Festival of the Performing Arts both run simultaneously at the beginning of March, followed by the very popular Kamloops Cowboy Festival. This festival showcases cowboy art, country music and cowboy poets from as far away as the state of Texas and city of Nashville.

Families can be kept extremely busy during their stay in Kamloops. Activities offered there include rock-hounding, fossil-hunting and gold-panning tours, available through the Kamloops Rock Works Ltd. For those who enjoy fishing, Gord Honey’s operates a fly-fishing guide service. A family can spend a day at The Ranch in Pritchard, about 45 minutes away from the city. It’s a family-owned operation where you can take a hayride and feed the animals. Be sure to ask to see the amorous goat or the peacock who likes car hoods, and have a barbecue there. Food is provided or you can bring your own.

Kamloops Heritage Railway boasts of bringing steam back. Its train, No. 2141, was built in 1912 by the Canadian Locomotive Company in Kingston, Ont., for the Canadian Northern Railway. Since September 2001, the train has been used by Kamloops Heritage Railway to operate tours.

Train tour destinations include Armstrong, which is known for its cheese. There are also very scary Ghost Train tours and the Spirit of Kamloops offers a ride back in time. Some adventure tours the railway offers include a stagecoach ride with some real Old West surprises – yahoo!

The Secwepemc Museum and Heritage Park is just east of the Kamloops Pow-Wow Grounds, on the Kamloops Indian Reserve. The museum houses both indoor and outdoor exhibits, including an outdoor botanical garden. Indoor exhibits allow visitors to learn about the history of the First Nations Secwepemc or Shuswap peoples.

Not to be missed is the British Columbia Wildlife Park, where 65 species, including grizzly bears, cougars, goats and a “kissing” moose, roam.

The newly enlarged and renovated interactive Discovery Centre at the park includes an Eco-Inquiry Gallery with interactive displays, from which the entire family can learn about British Columbia’s wildlife.

Also found in the Kamloops area are many golf courses. There are a number of cattle ranches, some of which welcome visitors. They include the Douglas Lake Cattle Company, just 40 minutes from Kamloops.

For shopping, visit the Horse Barn, which sells everything from cowboy souvenirs and artwork to western gear.

Kamloops’ Sunmore Ginseng Spa is out of the ordinary. It is a state-of-the-art facility that rivals any first-class spa worldwide. Sunmore not only offers a wide variety of services, but you can also top of your day of pampering with an ancient Chinese tea ceremony. A day at the spa is a perfect treat for mom while dad is fly-fishing with the kids.

Accommodations in Kamloops run the gamut from chain motels such as the Hampton Inn to the historic Plaza Heritage Hotel in the city’s downtown core and the beautiful South Thompson Inn and Conference Centre, minutes away from the British Columbia Wildlife Park. The upscale South Thompson Inn sits in the middle of a ranch on the banks of the South Thompson River.

An hour from Kamloops is Sun Peaks Resort. Next to Whistler, it is British Columbia’s biggest ski resort. It came into its own in 1993, at the base of what was then known as Tod Mountain. In fact, 1968 Olympic gold and silver medallist Nancy Greene Raine and her husband, Al Raine, left Whistler to open Nancy Greene’s Cahilty Lodge, a condo/hotel at Sun Peaks. Now the resort boasts an Italian Tyrolean Village of shops, restaurants and hotels, including the Delta Sun Peaks Resort and the family-owned Pinnacle Resort and Spa.

There are three mountains at Sun Peaks. The terrain over the area’s 4,000 acres is varied, offering powder-filled alpine bowls, groomed cruisers and glade skiing. In the winter, families can participate in a number of activities, such as skiing, snowboarding, dog-sledding, the Cat Trax Grooming Tour and snowmobiling. There’s even a circular kid’s snowmobiling track – with kid-sized vehicles.

In the summer, mountain biking and hiking are but a few of the many activities to keep your family occupied.

For more information about Kamloops, visit www.tourismkamloops.com.