A short family visit to Kelowna
I flew down to Kelowna, BC, on Monday for a family visit, and will be heading home tonight.
I don’t usually leave my car at the airport, but with a flight that lands in Whitehorse at midnight on a day that Cathy has to work, decided to do it this time. This was the view along the Alaska Highway at 05:46 on Monday.
Looking down on Carcross and Lake Bennett at 07:09. This is looking southwest.
The western edge of the forest fire just south of the Yukon border that’s closed the Stewart Cassiar Highway for much of the past couple of weeks.
I had over 4 hours to kill in Vancouver – the price to pay for getting flights on points. I had planned on taking the Canada Line downtown, but the weather wasn’t good so I stayed at YVR.
We were in the clouds for almost the entire 50-minute flight to Kelowna, but despite Environment Canada’s reports of thunderstorms, it was very nice when our Dash 8 landed.
Yesterday my sister and I had a great day shopping for bike gear and then touring farms and wineries. I got the armoured gear I need at a good price, discovering in the process that there are so many things to consider that buying online isn’t a reasonable option.
Our first agriculture stop was Summerhill Pyramid Winery.
We had an excellent lunch at Summerhill, which is an all-organic facility – my lunch included 4 pieces of apricot pizza.
Then out Lakeshore Drive through the area burned by the massive 2003 forest fire.
We tasted about a dozen different types of goat cheese at Carmelis Goat Cheese and left with 2 types for future enjoyment. I wanted to introduce Tracy to Gewurztraminer wine, but the first attempt at Cedar Creek Winery was unsuccessful – the light wine was totally overpowered by the lingering taste of goat cheese.
As well as wineries, we went to the Okanagan Lavender Farm, a very successful agri-tourism operation. With the lavender harvest over, the garden wasn’t too impressive.
My sister and I both find that the smallest wineries are the ones that offer the best experience. The photo below shows SpierHead Winery, the newest boutique winery in Kelowna. We thoroughly enjoyed chatting with the owner, a former commercial photographer – his signature Vanguard wine in particular is superb. It was just a photo of a wine bottle label that took us to our final winery of the day, the Okanagan Villa Estate Winery, but we left with 2 bottles of the Gewurztraminer that I had been trying to explain to Tracy 🙂
This is my view as I write this post. We have another beautiful day coming (sunshine and 29°C – 84°F), and then at 7:20 tonight I leave on the first leg of my trip home, with clear skies forecast for the entire trip.
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