Sunflicker weekend

Last weekend, Joelle, Ian, Bonnie and I drove down to Kelowna. Bonnie went to visit her friend there, while the rest of us played in the Sunflicker ultimate tournament. We actually left on Thursday night, with the intention of camping in Yoho National Park and completing our drive on Friday. This would allow us to break up our drive to Kelowna, which is about 10 hours long.

It was a rainy night when we took off from Edmonton, and the weather only got worse the farther we went into the mountains. When we arrived at Yoho, we were dismayed to see at least a foot of residual snow still on the ground, as well as snow falling all around us. Gross! Personally, I was not prepared to camp in the snow. I had packed with the intention of camping in Kelowna - warm, dry, no snow. We were getting pretty tired by the time we reached Yoho, so we decided instead of driving all night, we would try to find a cheap hotel in Golden.

We stayed here:The Golden Gate Motel. Very clever name. However, it was only 65$ for the four of us. Here is our room:Small, old and with bedspreads matching the curtains. We all know the type. At least we had a good night sleep and an early start for the next day.

We arrived in Kelowna around 1pm and drove out to the camp where we'd be staying for the tournament. We were one of the first few people there, so we had choice pick of cabins/tent spots. We ended up saving a cabin for our team arriving later that day, but decided setting up our tents would be more comfortable than the plywood bunks in the cabins.Above: the campsite. Note gazebo by the lake - this is where the dance/party is held.Our tents - the first ones up, placed strategically in the farthest corner from the party area.

After dropping off our camping gear, we headed out to explore some of the Okanagan's best sites - the wineries! First, we stopped at a place called 'Quail's Gate'. This was a smaller winery with a very quaint little wine shop, where the most inexperienced and nervous server let us sample a number of their wines. Truly, his hands were shaking so bad that we thought he might spill wine on us at one point. In any case, we forgave him his nerves and Joelle and Ian ended up purchasing a few bottles. None of these wines particularly appealed to me, so we moved on to the next winery - the oh-so-famous Mission Hill winery.

Mission Hill is to other wineries what Disneyland is to shopping mall carnivals. It's best described as an estate, with exquisitely groomed grounds, fancy architecture and a very well orchestrated ambiance. I will get some more pictures of Mission Hill from Ian later this week, so I'll post them when I get them. It truly is an impressive winery. We sampled wines here for a small fee and found a number that we liked. We ended up purchasing a bottle or two each before moving on to our last stop.

Sumac Ridge was our last stop. It's a cute little winery with really great wine - in fact, I was wishing I hadn't bought wine at Mission Hill once we got there, because their wine was just as good and much cheaper! Here are some pictures I took at this winery:After our touring, we dropped Bonnie off with her friend and headed back to camp to get a good night sleep before the tournament kicked off.