We left our chateau and headed for the town of Kelowna where we would meet the others for our Bookcliff Vineyards wine tour. Being the only ones coming by car, we arrived long before the Denver flight folks arrived.
We checked into our room at the Royal Anne Hotel…
…where our second floor room offered sliding glass door access onto a large balcony…
…overlooking Bernard Street, which is closed to traffic during the summer months.
The street is lined with restaurants, and we had no trouble finding a good place to dine.
Instead of enjoying Canadian food here in the Great White North, we dined on southern-style jambalaya served to us by a waitress from the Ukraine.
The next morning we met our group for tasting tours of three wineries. The first was Mt. Boucherie.
I’ve been to Kelowna no fewer than three times and have visited several of the local wineries in the past. Mt. Boucherie was a first for me.
The wine was pretty good, so we bought a couple of bottles to take back home.
Next stop was Mission Hill, which I’d visited several times in the past. They have one of the neatest wine cellars.
Of course, we bought a few bottles here, too.
The final winery of the day was Quail’s Gate, another of my favorites. It lies on the slopes above Lake Okanagan, an 84-mile-long puddle of water that defines the region.
They had the first tasting ready and waiting for our group of 22.
Back at the hotel that evening, we sat out on the deck and enjoyed the lights of Bernard Street.
Day Two of our tasting tour began with a visit to the Cedar Creek Winery (no relation to the Cedar Creek Lodge we stayed at in Montana). This was another new-to-me winery.
In addition to the fermented grape juice, Dianne and I enjoyed photographing the lupines, which were blooming on their hillside garden.
Our second stop of the day was Summerhill Pyramid Winery, an old favorite.
This visit, however, was disappointing. In the past, we’ve always been taken into the pyramid, which is built to the same proportions as the big guys in Egypt. There, we’d learn how bottle aging wine in the pyramid supposedly improves the product. We got none of that on this tour, which means the boys at Bookcliff won’t be trying to figure out how to build a similar pyramid at their winery in Boulder.
Our final winery of the day was Tantalus, which took me a bit to realize I had visited here once before. Nice tour. Good wine.
We had the morning free on our final tasting day, so Dianne and I put on our walkin’ shoes and hit the streets of Kelowna. Avoiding the temptation to buy some Kelownafornia apparel…
…the first stop on our lakeshore stroll was down at the marina.
We continued along the lake, passing various pieces of art such as this bear.
We saw folks out enjoying the lake in sailboats…
…paddling a women’s cancer survivor dragon boat…
…and parasailing high above a boat.
Our turnaround point was the Grand Okanagan Resort hotel, where I stayed on my first visit to Kelowna.
Out on the canal-like water here, we saw kayakers and geese with goslings enjoying the morning calm.
Our driver picked our wine group up at 1:30 in the afternoon for the long drive up the lake to the 50th Parallel Estate Winery.
Then it was off to to Peak Cellars where we had dinner.
Dianne assured me that while it looks disgusting, the green stuff here is actually edible.
Back at the hotel that evening, a few of us sat out on the balcony, enjoying a bit more wine.
The next morning, our wine tasting adventure completed, we loaded the two boxes of wine we had purchased (at least one bottle from each of the eight wineries) into the Subaru and set off on Trans-Canada Highway 1 for North Vancouver.
Along the way, we stopped at a roadside rest area and discovered…
…a food truck…
…and for those in need, there were charging stations for electric vehicles. These Canadians think of everything.