Bloganagan

Kelowna Wine Trails

I am one lucky grandma to live in the middle of the Westside Wine Trail, one of five newly designated routes on the Kelowna Wine Trails. My neighbours include Okanagan wine industry icons like Mission Hill (love hearing the bells of the carillon every day) and Quail's Gate; wineries like Little Straw, that despite a relatively new name, are producing vintages from vines that date to the 1960s; wineries dedicated to organic production like Kalala; old favourites like Mt. Boucherie and newbies like Volcanic Hills.

Davison Orchards Event

It's a couple of years since my last foray to Davison Orchards in Vernon, BC. On that trip we introduced my grandson, Alex, to jack 'o' lanterns in the raw and let him pick his own pumpkin from the field. Yesterday I was back to participate in Davison's new Taste & Explore our Local Abundance event. It was a fun day for me with the Grandma Wears Hiking Boots table set up between the Vernon Outdoors Club and my old buddy Rosanne Van Ee whose Outdoor Adventures feature large in the book. 

Grandma Wears Hiking Boots – Preview

Osoyoos Desert Model Railroad ... and so many more amazing miniatures

When a model train obsession runs completely amok and sucks in a whole family like an Oklahoma tornado in full twist, you wind up with the Osoyoos Desert Model Railway. If the trains (and buses and cars) weren’t moving, you’d hardly notice the track system that anchors a fantasy of mini mountain villages and cityscapes. Poul Pedersen (the obsessed) says there’s no master plan. He just lays down the tracks and his wife Ulla and daughter Lottie create a Lilliputian world around them. Sorry, I’m mixing literary images here – I could throw in Tom Thumb for good measure. You see where I’m going with this.

High-tech Okanagan Wine Tour

I can’t keep up. When I recently pulled out a wine country map, there I was, up to my barrel stopper in Black Widows and mystic pyramids, Blasted Churches and Freudian Sips. It made my head spin (and that’s before I started tasting).

Imagine my joy when news of a high-tech helper popped into my inbox. GyPSy Guide, which offers in-car GPS guided audio tours for the Rockies and Calgary/Vancouver/Victoria corridor, has inserted a special Okanagan wine tour into the program.

Hardy Falls - Kokanee Spotting

It’s a balmy fall Sunday. I’ve been buried in the office cave all week. I really n-e-e-e-d a hit of nature – something in a waterfall and maybe a bit of light Kokanee-spotting. Not a really tough trick in the Okanagan, unless your hiking partner’s a 23-pound six-month-old. You try pushing a stroller up the switchbacks to Bear Creek Falls!

Ditto for the eight hundred gazillion steps at Fintry.

Mission Creek Greenway is pretty and pushable, plus it comes equipped with salmon – but, alas, no waterfall.

I could see lots of birds at Haynes Point in Osoyoos – and it’s stroller-friendly – but now we’re coming up short on both waterfalls and salmon.

If you’re hoping there’s punch line somewhere, here it is – Hardy Falls.

Osoyoos Home Hardware: Best Place to Buy Everything ... Including the Kitchen Sink

Forget the mega-stores. Osoyoos Home Hardware’s the best ever reason to abandon big-box shopping. I mean, when’s the last time you saw a Wayne Gretzke autographed hockey stick at Home Depot? And just try finding a packet of Prince of Wales (yup, right from the Duchy of Cornwall) cookies at Rona. Think you’ll see a jail cell at Sears – only if you miss a payment.

CrocTalk

Conservation through education is Doug Illman’s mantra. It’s inspired him to focus a childhood interest in dinosaurs that expanded to a passion for crocodilians, into a life’s-work business dedicated to rescuing animals, informing people and changing attitudes—CrocTalk.

Located in Kelowna, Doug’s educational crocodilian talk show has attracted 35,000 visitors in the last four years with rave guest book comments from croc fans from around the world.

Easy-ridin' the KVR Trail: Chute Lake to Naramata

Mention the Kettle Valley Railway (KVR) Trail, and the Myra Canyon Trestles above Kelowna jump to mind. But there's another section of the old rail line that involves even more spectacular Okanagan scenery, a genuine character, lunch at a Naramata Bench winery, a mind-bogglingly knowledgeable tour guide, and one border collie.

“It’s all downhill,” Ed Kruger assures us as he packs people into, and mountain bikes on top of, his Monashee Adventure Tours bus. Comforting words for a couple of semi-out-of-shape middle agers joining a group of 30-something Vancouver lawyers on a 36-kilometre cycle trek team-builder.

Ed calls this tour Rock Ovens to Valley Vistas.

Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre

Why did the biologist paint the rattler’s tail yellow? Who cares – I hate snakes – well, more like love/hate. The fact is, I actually wanted to see a rattler, but they’re getting so scarce in BC’s southern Okanagan Valley that my best chance for a sighting was the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre in Osoyoos.