More summer vacation adventures!

Enjoying

the winery!

As I left off, I celebrated my birthday with family in Kelowna, and took my dad trail riding in the Westbank, and we picked a ton of sour cherries.

The small red dots? Swimmer’s itch…picture it EVERYWHERE.

We also went to Peachland and went swimming- it is such a gorgeous spot, and excellent for visiting and swimming. There are bathrooms aplenty, free parking, a dive tower, a swing rope over the lake, and lifeguards.

The only thing I didn’t realize they also had? SWIMMERS ITCH! 😦

Swimming- in the pool this time, phew! 

Dude we got it so bad. Hah. I was scratching like crazy out of the water and at lunch (outdoor patio at the big German place. It was good!). But damn we got it bad. We were soooooo itchy. And the next morning, we realized that everyone had tonnes of red welts all over. Hah. Lesson learned!

Great margaritas on the patio in Penticton!

I stuck to swimming in the pool after that 🙂 And at Skaha Lake, where we went for a quick dip after visiting Penticton, such a lovely little town with quaint shops and a great and very reasonably priced Mexican restaurant, where again, we chose safety and sat outdoors at a patio with no patrons nearby.

Ian and I also spent a day going to two different wineries and checked out BNA Brewery. It was really cool (literally…it was about 35 degrees out) and they offered you still or sparkling water for FREE! Bonus points in my books!! Plus they had some giant model horses that I was sooo envious of!

Next up in our adventures…Going to Nelson!

 

The Interior for a holiday

Featuring…lots of haze and smoky skies, courtesy of the wildfire situation happening all over B.C. at the moment. In Victoria right now, it’s crazy smoky and the air quality is really poor. I am happy to say it wasn’t that bad in Kelowna- some high haze but still fairly warm and sunny. It got a lot worse when we left actually- they had to shut down the airports! Yikes…

Dirty Laundry winery.

Anyways we went to the interior for a bit of sun and summer warmth (that was only partially thwarted by the wilfires). We visited wineries, went on a run to the 12 trestles trail at the Kettle Valley Railway,. ate at restaurants, bought wine by the case (me), went to breweries and cideries, did some short hikes with Gidget and swimming! (pool, Similkimeen River and Okanagan Lake).

Hot dog! At Dirty Laundry winery.

All in all, it felt really good to get away.

Swimming in the Similkimeen. COLD! 

Really smoky in Keremeos. View from a winery.

Finished the run at the Kettle Valley Railway. Hot but good! 

Vice & Virtue Brewery art- Kelowna.

Yes we did a lot of this!!

Wedding Week?!!

Yep, I was away for a week attending (and working at) my sister’s wedding! It was crazy!!

To add to the madness, it was in Nakusp, a tiny town roughly 7.5 hours away from Vancouver, located in the Kootenays. My family has a long history there, so it was nice to re-visit it, as it had been about 15 years or longer since I’d been back.

We left last Thursday, after I ran a pretty fun (and lucrative!) track race on Wednesday night. Headed out on the first ferry, picked my friend up from the skytrain, and we were OFF!

One very long drive later, two ferries, and we were in Nakusp. Only to immediately zip out again to check out these hotsprings (word to the wise: the road up to them is SO ROUGH and I do not advise taking a tiny Honda Fit there, at all. Yiiiiiiikes). Really nice though! Just so tough to drive up, and quite hazardous.

Won the draw prize! Sweet Frontrunners swag!!

Then, my friend and I went on a run Friday morning and that was it for our free time. It was wedding, wedding and oh, wedding from then onwards….

 

Setting up the hall with chairs, tables, tablecloths (had to wrangle more from their owner), napkin settings, drinking glasses, decorations, so many decorations, lights, the candy buffet- I owned that one, ha- chair coverings, tulle bows, more decorations, balloons, swag, things that hang from the ceiling, flowers…

So yep, that ate up all Friday, and then we hosted the family get-together BBQ at the house my husband rented for us. It was great! We took down the BBQ, and I woke up the next morning to my sister yelling at our window to get up, and move chairs to the beach for the ceremony that was happening at 3 p.m….

Backyard of the house we rented with a rainbow!

Chairs wrangled, and it looked really nice! Then it was off to get our hair & makeup done. That took FOREVER, ha. I was also working the phones for some real last-minute things (more wine, more lights, the ‘guest log’ that I literally pulled off the beach so people could sign it, needed a marker, helium balloons, etc etc).

Tiring but we made it to the ceremony and it was beautiful! And quick!

Then it was photos for oh, close to 3 hours…I was STARVING. Ian had to run and grab M&M’s and granola bars from the nearby grocery store. Luckily everything is close together in Nakusp! We wrapped up the photos in a boat (ha, boats boats boats!!!), just as a storm blew in and the wind was something fierce.

Boats boats boats!

We ran for cover in the nearby Leland Hotel, something of a dive but also the oldest hotel in B.C.! Grabbed beers and appies, and then I called my husband to drive us to the reception, haha. Once there, things smoothed out a bit, but there were a few funny moments…No wine glasses on the tables being one of them! The caterer forgot and had to rush back home to get them. Hahah!~ The DJ was also kind of a moron, and we couldn’t find him because he was wearing all black in a very dark hall. Jeesh! He also played a song OVER the slideshow my husband had made for the wedding, that HAD music. Stop the DJ, he’s out of control!!

Food was great, drinks were flowing, and the most important thing was that my sister had the best wedding of her dreams 🙂

On the way back home, we stayed for a few days in Penticton. The weather sucked, but we made do with 3 winery visits and 3 brewery visits in one day!

Okanagan Lake is drowning!

Biggest weekend recap ever: Jumping, massively sick, a bachlorette party?

Thursday I rode in my lesson (perhaps unwisely) as I had gotten turned away at work for showing up sick…I had a horrible sore throat that came on suddenly overnight and it was just awful. I couldn’t sleep all night, felt like knives stabbing my throat and I couldn’t swallow, my throat was so swollen.

Yay…

So I went home and lay around the house after work kicked me out. It was so boring that I was desperate to do something, so I dragged myself out of the house and went, drowsily, to my lesson. Where we jumped 2’9” hahah.

I know eh? But hey, it went fine! Scared the bejeezus out of me but he did it great every time! More times than I wanted to jump even! We just kept doing it. The other jumps weren’t…so good. He had some issues with a short distance into a line and kept slamming on the brakes? WTF? He is not a horse that stops, and it was NOT high, haha. It was almost like he was getting spooked by it? Weird. We did that one over and over again until it was fine with no issues.

Silly pony. 2’9” oxer no prob, but 2’3” black and yellow? Nuh huh!

I felt very spacey and dizzy after. Ugh. Just in time for my sister’s bachlorette party in Kelowna, which I was flying out to on Friday. Whoop! *cough* cough* sneeze repeatedly, cough some more…My sinuses hurt…

The view from Arrowleaf winery. Sigh…

But yes, Kelowna. Despite being pretty sick, I had a really fun time! We rented a condo in a golf course area, and we had a blast! We visited the Kangaroo farm on Saturday, and then found a beach that wasn’t completely flooded out to chill out on and eat some junk food picnic, drink some booze, and float around on the lake!

We wrapped up that day by more drinks around the pool at the condo, and then a BBQ (that turned out to be a total shenanigan…we had no propane tank?) meaning we had to make friends with a football team staying at the golf course to borrow their propane tank…It didn’t work so we had to get them over to fix it…I then put temporary tattoos on them like ‘Cheers Bitches’ and ‘Team Bride’ and ‘Miss to Mrs.”…fun times!

I’m a natural (wallaby) mother!

I drank a touch too much but also I blame the heat (28 deg and unused to it) + junk food+ cold medication so yeah, ended up feeling quite rough the next morning. I got my run gear on, went to tie up my shoes, immediately felt like puking, ran to the bathroom, threw up, and then went back to try the shoes again (success!) and went on a wimpy, hot, weirdly sweaty run.

Got back, still felt queasy and ick, showered and ate a bagel and then we were off to wine tours! The tours were great, we went to these wineries and they all had really neat and different venues with lots to offer.

• The Blind Tiger
• Arrowleaf Winery
• Parallel 50
• Grey Monk- we had lunch here and it is PRICEY. The food was not included in the wine tour, so the tour was $150, and lunch at the winery ran about $45/per person. Ouch!
• Intrigue Winery

All in all, a great but quite expensive day.

What’s a bachlorette party without hunks?

Then we were back to the pool & hot tub, and I swam for a bit in the pool. Really enjoyed it! I wast totally sacked though, so I prepared dinner for the gang (all 7 of us) from our grocery leftovers and did a pretty good job if I do say so myself, and then went to bed and didn’t sleep at all. Sigh! My flight out was at 8:45am on Monday and I felt so sad to leave. It was so hot, it felt like summer was finally here.

A good weekend all around, and I even got back to ride Oats on Monday, get a sunburn on my shoulders and still continue being sick back at work today. That part sucks!