British Columbia: The Best Place On Earth

Tues. Aug. 7, 2007

All throughout our cross country drive, we were hoping to see some wild life. We saw a deer crossing the highway early on in our trip, then cathy claims she saw a bear and then f.Do claims she saw a moose/elk/antalope (it changed depending on whatever new wild life pic she saw in various brochures), but one thing was sure, we saw 3 moose grazing on grass early Tuesday morning as we were leaving Jasper.



British Columbia!! We finally crossed our last provincial border!!!





BC! High FIVE!!!



I really wanted to see a mountain goat on the trip but the closest I got to one was this sign ...



Vale Mont, BC: We had to make a stop in this small town to do an oil change. Small towns are always entertaining. From the sign advertising a smogesboard aka Buffet or a hotel called the Ramakada aka Ramada, how can one possibly be bored?





The most entertaining part of our little stop-over was this man we met whose car broke down while trying to drive his granddaughter's goat back to his home in Calgary. Among his many stories, he decided to share with us that even though this goat was a virgin, she was still able to provide milk.




After the entertaining stop over for the oil change, we did a bit of back-tracking through kamloops, kelowna and then into the Okanagan for some good loving wine.

We were unsure we would be able to make the cut-off time for wine tastings since the one bridge in kelowna took forever! However, due to our crazy asian efficiency, we were able to make it to 2 wineries.

First stop, Quail's Gate Winery:



Quail's Gate Winery: Beautiful winery but not the greatest tasting wines. After 3 tastings each, we were out of there.




Mission Hill Estate Winery: Absolutely the most breath-taking winery I've ever seen. You actually feel like you're in Italy rather than the west coast of Canada.











This winery was awesome. Not only was it absolutely beautiful, we also indulged in some "freeness" Let me start from the beginning. We decided to only get 2 tastings per person, therefore we would end up with 6 in total. However, our Sommelier overlooked this and gave us 3 wine tastings each. That was free #1. Free #2 occured when we bought our 6 bottles of wine. So because we had paid $3/person for our 2/person tasting, we were supposed to get a credit of $9 off our purchase. However, since the Sommelier thought we had purhcased the $5/person for 3/person tasting, we received $15 credit, therefore, a gain of $6! Sweeeeet!!!



The estate had this little stage that had the most luscious grass I've ever laid on.





We also had dinner at the Mission Hill Estate Winery. Not only was the food good but the view was absolutely amazing.





If anyone is looking for a romantic getaway, this is definitely the place. SIGH...