Thursday and Friday of Our Trip to Kelowna B.C.

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Thursday and Friday was another busy few days, but for very different reasons. Thursday was busy, because it was the  last day of site seeing and Friday was spent traveling 6 hours from Kelonwa B.C. to Spokane Washington. On Thursday we ending taking a hike on Knox Mountain that was several miles up hill, took a winery tour at the Gray Monk Estate Winery, and finished our night at an indoor water park.

Our first stop of the day was a mourning hike on Knox Mountain. Knox Mountain is a micro climate that is mostly arid and is the end of the Osoyoos desert. In this little part of the desert you will find sage brush and pines. The animal life has a variety of animals including dear and black bears.

We drove to the top for pictures and then drove back down to a midway rest area and hiked to our trail. We took a several mile up hill trail to Christina Lake just off the road. It small quietly nested inside a small valley surrounded by pines and hidden at the top you can see several large homes over looking the pond.

During our hike we saw a lot of ,all them were just out of camera range. I did get a couple on a 16x digital zoom, but they are a bit grainy and there is nothing I can do with them. I will probably post them in the photo album next week sometime. The hike was a lot fun but hard work. For someone like me, who is very out of shape, doesn’t like warm weather, and hates walking up steep hills, it took some effort. So if you are out of shape and doing this in the summer, make sure to bring plenty of water and take lots a breaks! But its worth the view.

After finishing up at Knox Mountain, we then took a short drive up to Gray Monk Winery which is about 20 minutes up highway 97 towards Vernon. This is one of the larger and older estate wineries in the region. The owners, George & Trudy Heiss moved here from Europe back in 1972 and they having been working on the winery and vineyards ever since.

As mentioned before, we took a tour of the winery and learned a lot from our guide. We got to see a little of what they do there on site. But the site is so large and they keep expanding so they have to a lot of their storage offsite.

At the end of the tour we got to taste six of their wines. All of which were good. We had several we wanted to buy and in the end we only got one bottle. We decided to get one, just because it was going to be to hard to get more than one back in the states. Besides, we have family living there and we can always get them to bring us a bottle next time they come or next time we go up there. The wine we did choose bring was a rare one and can only be found at that winery. Its rare because the wine uses a hybrid grape that is only grown in their vineyards. It makes a true rose wine and not made like traditional blended reds and whites to make a rose. The wine is the Rotberger.

The last stop of the day was a visit to a local water park. The place is called H20 and is part of the YMCA. It was a lot of fun and since it was a school night, there was not that many people there. They have slides, lap pools, small wave pool, lazy river, and flow surfer ride. The flow surfer ride is basically a lot of water shot out in a sheet over a slick and padded surface and up a gently slop. This simulates a wave. This way you can body surf or surf standing up. I tried both, and its a lot different from the real thing. I didn’t mess with to much since we were on a time crunch and I was having more fun on the water slides and diving boards! Sorry no pictures…

As you can tell by the post, its Friday night and we just got into the hotel a few hours ago. We had an interesting trip back. We took the desert route back and ate lunch on the way to Spokane. But I am getting ahead of myself. We started our day beautiful sunny and warm. The first since we arrived hear Sunday afternoon. Its to bad we did not get the chance to get more days like this. The above picture was taken early morning and as you can tell its bright! I tried to darken the image a little for more detail, but that the best I could do.

One the way back, I was lucky enough to get some pictures of some old trucks parked / dumped out front of someone’s house. The place had a lot of old farm and other equipment. Due to time restraints and other issues, I was only able to photograph a few the old wrecks.

Along the way, I came across several scenic places to shoot pictures and several places full old cars to shoot but due to timing issues, finding a place to park, and find away to get to those spots, I felt it would not be fair to others riding with me, if I stopped them every time I found something to shoot. So I saved the places in my memory and on the next trip, I will stop by and take some pictures. Hopefully I will have better photography equipment as well.

Thanks for stopping by and reading about our personal lives this week. Starting next week, I will start working on more tutorials and other blogging topics. So stayed tuned for those and the rest my vacation pictures!