Kalala Organic Estate Winery is a producer of wines made with 100% certified organic grapes, located on the upper bench of West Kelowna in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, Canada. Kalala, meaning “Miracle Place”, is the symbol of our commitment to harmony with nature, organic viticulture practices, and our wines.

https://www.kalala.ca/about/

As we parked and got out of the car, someone greeted us and brought us over to the outdoor wine tasting area. They told us the wine shop was near capacity because of COVID precautions. We were happy to do our tasting outside anyway because I get anxious if we have to spend any considerable amount of time inside with other people.

The outdoor wine tasting bar was really nice, and we got a view of the vineyard as well as peeks of Okanagan Lake. Beyond the bar was a series of picnic tables and umbrellas. You can bring your own food, buy a bottle of wine, and enjoy the views.

There was a small fee for a tasting, waived with purchase. They had 4 wines to taste, and well as 2 iced wines for an additional fee. We got to learn more about the vineyards, as well as the wines. We learned afterward that we were chatting with Kalala’s Proprietor and Viticulturist, Karnail Sidhu. I really liked the Kalala logo, as Kalala means “Miracle Place” and symbolizes the legend of the origins of this particular village where farmers came upon a wolf and lamb sitting peacefully together.

The Pinot Gris was lovely, nice, and off-dry. The Rosé was an absolute rockstar, comprised of 4 grapes and tasted predominately of the Gewürztraminer. The first red Harmony Red was a blend, which didn’t really excite us. The second red, Aspire, a Merlot Cab Sauv blend really blew us away. It spent 30 months in oak, and those grapes hail from the Naramata and Osoyoos. We really enjoyed the 2014 Aspire, and were told it would be good to lay down for 2-3 years too.

Iced wines always pique our interest. We always taste them and almost always convince ourselves we need to buy a bottle. Then it sits around in our cellar for forever, because a bottle of iced wine is a lot to drink between 2 people. Kalala had 2 iced wines for tasting, a Riesling, and a Merlot iced wines. Both were fantastic! They were left to ferment for longer than usual for iced wines, which helps bring down the sugars. They had great mouthfeel, and the sweetness didn’t linger much in your mouth. We absolutely loved the Merlot iced wine but opted not to get any because while we loved it, we just wouldn’t have drunk it.

We had no idea how large Kalala’s wine portfolio was until we went inside to make our purchase. They were also selling a variety of jams as well as crystal wine glasses with their logo. They have a Frizzante that I’d like to pick up the next time we visit.

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Oliver and Osoyoos are some of our favorite hangouts in BC. We love the wine, the restaurants, the views, and the vibes in the southern Okanagan. We used to go all out every time we came down to this area, trying to taste as much as possible. In the last few years, we’ve started limiting ourselves to about 2-4 at most. We have to hit some of our favorites, and we try to check out a new-to-us winery.

The Oliver Osoyoos Wine Country Association has this “Passport Program” that encourages you to visit all these wineries for tastings and get stamps, and you get entered into a draw of some sort. We used to do it every time we visited the region, trying to taste as much as possible as the stamping system brings out our competitive side.

As we’ve grown over the years, we slowly stopped doing that because it gets pretty tricky after a few wineries. It made sense at first because every winery was new to us. Eventually, some wineries became favorites, and so we’d know what to expect. But when you go to too many wineries in one afternoon, at least in our case, everything starts to taste the same.

It was finally time to try out Le Vieux Pin Winery. We’ve driven by it many, many times because we’re always on Black Sage Road. The wine ambassador was really lovely and let us try everything. All of their wines are French-inspired, and we loved them all! We’ll have to go back and document our tasting more closely.

Black Hills was no different, they were awesome as usual! We’re wine club members and have access to the cabana tastings. We didn’t have the chance to stop for lunch, we typically like to stop by Miradoro, the restaurant at Tinhorn Creek Vineyards.

We used to take weekend trips to Oliver/Osoyoos when we lived in Vancouver. Now that we live in Kelowna, it’s easy to make a few winery visits into a day trip. In the summer, there are tons of fruit and veggie stands open, so we make sure we start the day on the earlier side, so we can swing by those stands before they close. A good portion of the drive is along Okanagan Lake, so the views are simply stunning.

We’ve seen people cycling from winery to winery around here. We’ve cycled Black Sage Road before. And we’ve participated in the Half Corked Marathon with running from winery to winery. All the power to you, but it’s more enjoyable to drive around for tastings! If you have an electric vehicle, there are a few places and a few wineries that have “free charging”, like Black Hills. However, those chargers charge so slowly, it’s not even really worth plugging in. The temperatures are super hot, so think about bringing a cooler for your wines. And it’s way too toasty to bring a dog during the summer, so it’s best to leave them back at the hotel or at home.

Have you been to Oliver or Osoyoos? What are your favorite wineries?

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There is a valet when you arrive at La Quinta Resort & Club. The club is also in a gated neighborhood. When we arrived and drove through the parking lot, we found a super close parking spot, and hopped out quickly to grab our own golf bags to bring to check-in. I mentioned in another post to remember to bring money for tips and gratuity in Palm Springs. We still didn’t have any cash on us, so we hurried before anyone could help us.

We headed into the pro shop for check-in. There were lots of nice things to browse, and the clubhouse looked really nice. The practice range at La Quinta Resort & Club is gorgeous. The views are beautiful in front of you, as well as behind you because there’s a nice water feature. There was a loudspeaker calling for the different parties up to their tee times.

La Quinta Resort & Club’s website describes the Dune Course in the following way: This 72-par course, designed by Pete Dye, offers traditional rolling-links style golf with Scottish and Irish flair, characterized by rolling mounds, manicured fairways and thick rough. Length, strength and finesse are key to scoring well on this course, which has hosted the PGA Club Professional Championship, and the Californian State Open.

At this point in time, I do not know what rolling-links style golf is, but the Dunes course was nice to play. Unlike the Gary Player Signature course with their rough, the rough here was as described, thick. There were a couple holes where if you hit it into the rough, your ball was gone.

We had an afternoon tee time and were able to make it to the 15th hole by the time it got too dark to play any further. While it would be nice to play a morning round, we loved the colours and the sun setting above the mountain range. The lighting was beautiful, and the course was a blast to play. It’s a Pete Dye designed course, so he’s a bit of a trickster at times with the way he’s set everything up. Bring a strong chip game.

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Austin Must See

• Greetings from Austin mural
• The Boardwalk or anywhere around Lady Bird Lake
• 6th Street for live music – this is a must-see!
• Texas State Capitol building

Austin Must Eat/Drink

• Suerte – order everything to eat and drink! Suerte is hands down one of my most favorite restaurants of 2020. They grind their own corn things for their tortillas! It was luxurious! Suerte is apparently known for its “Suadero Tacos” with black magic oil and avocado salsa cruda, but I couldn’t have any. The carne asada was still a very happy decision, and nothing like any carne asada I’ve ever had. They also said it was Kobe Beef upon serving, and who am I to question them?
• Here Not There – a speakeasy. The vibe is awesome, it smells dreamy throughout the place. And the cocktails are all labors of love.
• BBQ, honestly try to hit up as many as you can to see what you like best! Franklin BBQ is up there. Salt Lick BBQ is a favorite but it’s a small drive to Driftwood Texas. Very touristy, but I like their BBQ sauces.
• South Congress Cafe – for brunch. Try the carrot cake French toast, and the Bloody Mary’s are amazing!
• La Condesa – upscale Tex Mex. The shrimp tacos are a good pick, and all their classic cocktails are great.
• La Pâtisserie – swing by for a coffee and macarons when you visit the “Greetings From Austin” mural

Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail, Boardwalk at Lady Bird Lake

Make lunch plans to hang around Driftwood for BBQ and wine tastings

Have dinner at Suerte

Walk by the Texas State Capitol building and end the evening at Here Not There speakeasy

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We ended up playing four times over the course of our vacation, at three different courses. The first thing I want to say is, remember to bring money for gratuities! We never use much cash and I forgot to pack our American pocket money so that was at home back in Canada. I felt a little awkward because there would be people helping carry and load our bags onto the carts, as well as clean our clubs after our game, and I’ll admit I didn’t tip … because I didn’t have any cash! I felt so bad.

We played at the following clubs around Palm Springs, and really enjoyed our experience at each one. These are considered resort courses, read: easy courses, so they are perfect for playing on vacation. We thought the courses were very forgiving, so if you haven’t played in a while or just not very good, it’s a really nice way to experience golf. The views are stunning, and the course designs were great. We also realized that we have it really good in Kelowna for golf, and that some of the courses we play at home are hard AF!

• Gary Player Signature Course at Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort & Spa
• Pete Dye Course at Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort & Spa
• Dunes Course at La Quinta Resort & Club

We brought our own golf clubs because we had the option of extra baggage with our vacation booking. When we did our research, it also looked like the most economical choice anyway. We didn’t know how many rounds of golf we were going to be able to get in in our week in Palm Springs. We didn’t know the quality of the club rental, or the selection, or price, so we decided to bring our own equipment down. Just make sure you have a big enough rental car. With 2 dog carriers, 2 checked pieces of luggage, and 2 golf bags, our rental SUV ended up being quite full. It looked like our hotel also offered golf club storage, but we didn’t take them up on that and instead just stored the clubs in our room.

Upon reflection and with the recent experience of air travel and transporting our golf clubs, it might be time to upgrade our golf bags because they are a million years old and weigh a ton. They both also have kickstands, and mine has always been a bit confusing for golf helpers to deal with, so it may be time to get lighter bags without stands. We recently bought golf carts because there are courses at home we like to play at, like 2 Eagles in West Kelowna, that are very walkable. So between having hand carts, and playing at courses that require power carts, it really makes sense.

Some of the courses in Kelowna allow you to take the power cart into the parking lot, so you can load up at your car. None of that is acceptable in Palm Springs. You can do valet or someone will greet you in the parking lot and help carry your bags over. When you wrap up your game, someone will help wipe your clubs, as well as the unload/load. When we played at the Pete Dye course, since it was on the property of the hotel, we got to take the golf cart back to our room, with supervision by one of the golf helpers of course! Otherwise, at the Westin they have a golf cart shuttle, so you can be picked up or dropped off, and not have to lug your golf bag so far.

We had a really fun time golfing around Palm Spring. We’re already looking forward to the next time we can golf there, and it’ll be a matter of coaxing our parents into playing with us! We mostly played in the afternoon, so the light was especially stunning on the landscape. We enjoyed the mild December weather, but do make sure to pack some warm layers because the temperature can vary so much in December. And throw some little heat packs into your golf bag, like the ones you can use for skiing. One of our fellow golf couples gave us some in one of our games, and they were such a nice little lifesaver!

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Here is a smattering of photos. It doesn’t feel like our place to publish the specific addresses of these doors. So just do a quick Google search of “pink door palm springs” and replace it with any colour, you’ll get the specific addresses of the homes. Look up “party lions palm springs” and that’ll put you in the area and neighborhood you need to be in.

How to get around

A lot of these Palm Springs Door Tour houses are in the same neighborhood. While not all of them have coloured doors, a majority of them are still stunning! Beautifully designed, with equally stunning landscaping. We just drove around because we didn’t know how far apart the houses would be. And it was too cold despite the sun shining and blue skies, so we weren’t dressed appropriately.

If you’re staying nearby, say at the classic Palm Springs hotel, Saguaro, they usually have hotel bikes, so you can definitely tour on a bicycle. There seemed to be big bike lanes on the roads, and it’s not much to navigate with traffic.

What time is best?

The light in Palm Springs is beautiful, especially the few hours in the afternoon close to sunset. That is probably the best time to go do your own door tour. The light isn’t too harsh and you won’t have extremely light and dark areas in your photos. We didn’t have all day so we just went around 11am and the pictures still turned out fine.

The Party Lions house is a fun one to visit because the owners dress up the lions. When I was doing research, it looks like they are often dressed up with pool toys.

The Pink Door house is apparently all the rage. We took this picture from the street. Didn’t even get out of the car. I’m pretty sure you don’t need permission to stand in the street to take a photo of a building, and that includes houses.

Overall, we really enjoyed driving around these neighbourhoods in Palm Springs. We love admiring different designs of houses. The coloured doors are what initially attracted us to do our own door tour. But when we got there, we were just taken away with how beautiful the designs of the homes were, as well as the manicured landscaping. It really makes me wish we could have those huge, full-blown cacti at home in our garden since we do xeriscaping!

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Arriving at the Gary Player Signature Course

When we showed up at the course, someone had greeted us in the parking lot. He drove over with a power cart and started loading us up. We got checked in and headed over to their practice range to warm up. The range offered nice expansive views.

The Experience

The experience of golfing was super fun at Gary Player. We played on Christmas Day, so it was a bit quiet. There was a beverage cart going around, but there was no opportunity to buy any food. We didn’t get very hungry while we were playing anyway. The bathrooms are called comfort stations, and I thought that was super cute.

Course Design

The course design was really nice, and we really liked how the rough was just as nice as the fairway! The rough not part of the fairway, which is where you mostly want to be on when golfing. The rough is often higher, thicker grass. In Kelowna, the rough on the golf courses is sometimes unkept and it’s impossible to find your ball on some holes (cough cough Predator Ridge). Or you just don’t want to venture into it to play because of snakes, holes, poison ivy, etc. the list goes on. The rough at Gary Player was so nice that it really makes for a forgiving and easy course to play. If you can’t hit your ball straight, there are lots of slopes along the course that help channel your ball back onto the fairway.

Thoughts

Golfing is a funny sport. It has a high barrier of entry. And I know there are some people who get a little stressed out playing, especially if you’re playing at nicer courses. But if I learned anything, resort courses are the best! From our personal experience, they are designed to be easy, and it makes sense. People might have never played that course before, or are without their own clubs, or whatever the case may be. I’d definitely recommend playing resort courses because they’re beautiful, and not very stressful. You can still take your game seriously if you wanted to, or you can also just enjoy your round and take in the sights and sounds of what the course has to offer. I definitely did the latter.

Have you golfed anywhere in Palm Springs? What was your experience?

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Friday Afternoon – Wineries and Golf

I was expecting my friend to show up a little closer to noon, so that we could possibly have lunch before heading out for wine tastings. And also have time to get in a round of golf afterward. She was wrapping up her work trip “nearby” just north of Vernon, but there was so much traffic so it took her a bit longer than expected to get into Kelowna. Though, it really really didn’t matter what time we started because you can only really hit up so many wineries before they all start to taste the same… if you know what I mean.

We headed out to Summerland because we like a lot of wineries out there, and since it was the long weekend we thought we would try and avoid the crowds locally in Kelowna. We drove down and started our tasting up at Thornhaven. The last time we went, we loved everything they had to offer. This time we found everything to be much sweeter than we remembered. It was good, but today it was not to our taste. We had a great time in the tasting room though, as we lucked out between crowds and had the whole place to ourselves.

In addition to Thornhaven winery, we also went to Lunessence, Silkscarf, and Sumac Ridge before we headed back. Lunessence has great red wines and beautiful views of the vineyard and the lake. One of our friends really likes Silkscarf so we went back, but again we really didn’t care for it so I think we’ll stop trying. Shelby really likes wines from Sumac Ridge so we brought her there to wrap up the winery tastings. Sumac Ridge had a great range of wine to try, and we really like the Stellars Jay bubbly from there. After trying not to buy too many wines, we had a decent haul for ourselves to bring home.

Summerland is a quick jaunt away from Kelowna, so it didn’t take very long to get back. We put on our golf gear before we went wine tasting, so we were able to drive straight to the golf course. We decided to take Shelby to 2 Eagles in West Kelowna. She said she hadn’t played in a while, and we thought the front 9 offers beautiful views, isn’t terribly challenging, super walkable and gives you a good opportunity to socialize.

Since we were playing a twilight round and it was getting late, we decided to just eat at the course. The weather was super nice and we sat out on the patio.

Saturday – Hikes, Brunch, Charcuterie and Dinner

Sunday started off with a hike at Knox Mountain. If you’ve never hiked anywhere in Kelowna, Knox is a great place for it to be your first. We parked in the lower lot, and took the trail up to the top. We hiked Apex to Camelot to Ogopogo to Paul’s Tomb.

It took us a little over 90 minutes to do the hike, and then headed out for brunch at Central.

The food is pretty consistent at Central. We ended up crashing their luau party, so they had an even more fun selection of food. But we all ended up deciding to order off the regular menu. Brunch was really filling, so we decided that the beach was in order to relax and enjoy the afternoon.

There are tons of beaches in Kelowna, but Gyro is a nice place to go if it’s your first time. There’s plenty of parking, and the beach is quite large with a mix of sand, and grassy areas at the back. There are nice restrooms and change rooms nearby, as well as a simple food kiosk. There’s also a ton of shops and restaurants nearby, so it’s really quite a good setup.

Since we had been out all day, we headed home for our own little happy hour and dinner. Our friends turned us onto truffle salami, so we put some of that out with home made hummus and garden grown cherry heirloom tomatoes. We love snacking at our house, so we think we put together a pretty mean charcuterie. We will soon have to get ourselves a graze board since those seem to be all the rage, but I like keeping all the snacks separate so they don’t get soggy and mixed up.

Justin made lightly grilled albacore tuna, Shishito peppers, yams, yellow zucchini and grilled romaine for dinner.

After dinner, we ended up hanging outside on the patio some more with a couple bottles of wine. It was the perfect temperature, not too hot and not too cold. There was a slight breeze and didn’t seem like there were too many mosquitos out. We fired up the outdoor fireplace, and turned on the string lights. It was a perfect way to cap off Shelby’s visit.

Sunday – Chilling and Mountain Biking

Shelby wanted to hit the road early since she was heading back to Vancouver, so she left in the morning. Justin and I ended up going mountain biking to wrap up our weekend.

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Package Pickup / Showcase Store

There is a wristband system at SeaWheeze and you are supposed to register in advance for when you want to pick up your package, as well as shop the Showcase Store. I used to think the shopping was a tad ridiculous, because what could they possibly be selling that has people camping out in the street overnight? However, I got the chance to shop last year with some friends, and I totally get it now. It’s actually quite fun, there’s tons of cute and limited edition merch being sold, as well as the very coveted reflective gear.

The organization for the reflective gear was absolutely ridiculous. In my experience, all you had to do was show up early, and then head straight to the reflective merchandise booth. This year, they handed out cards with specific names on it in the lineup. And they would call out specific card names throughout the morning. The premise was to allow shoppers to browse at other merchandise, instead of waiting in line for reflective gear and missing out on the other items throughout the convention center. It just didn’t make sense in my opinion, but I’m grateful for my loving husband for enduring that ordeal and picking up some cute things for us.

Package pickup was pretty straight forward after the shop. So nothing much to really write about. Justin came back to the hotel and we went for breakfast.

We had Kintaro ramen for dinner, and then went to Thierry for dessert. They didn’t have mille feuille the last time I was there, and we were really happy to be able to pick some up this time. There weren’t any places to sit inside or on the Thierry patio so we headed back to the hotel to eat our treats.

Race Morning

We stayed at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver. And it is my new favourite hotel in downtown. It’s dog-friendly and much closer to all the activities than the Sheraton. The race started at 7am, and we rolled out of bed around 5:15-5:30am to have some coffee. The weather was overcast, so Justin wore a Lululemon shirt, his SeaWheeze race shorts, Salomon hydration vest for water and to carry his phone, and ProCompression socks. We walked over to the start line, and puttered around a little bit. We saw our friends Richard and company, he and his/our friend Carmen is the whole reason why we got into SeaWheeze. And then after they headed off on their way, Justin got into the corral.

I decided that I wanted to be able to take some pictures of Justin on the course just after the start. So I headed past the start line arches and towards Hastings and Burrard. There was a bunch of huge construction trucks that lined the right side of the course, and I just realized as I’m writing this that I think it was set up that way for crowd safety — which I really appreciate.

Since we got up so early, I headed back to the hotel after the race start to take the doggos out and feed them breakfast. I assumed the hotel had hotel bikes and I had this great plan that I would be able to use one to go catch Justin on Burrard Bridge. When I headed down to the Concierge, they said they had no bikes left so walking it was.

When I checked the race tracker within the Lululemon app, I saw that Justin was making incredible time so I booked it down to Burrard Bridge. I cheered for a bit, and when I checked the app again, it appeared that Justin had already passed! So I ran down Pacific, cut down Denman to hopefully catch him at the 20km mark. I never ran so fast. When I finally got to my spot and cheered for runners. I realized that there was an error with the map. I was spectating the same people who I saw at Burrard Bridge, and they were not quite elite, but I knew they were pretty fast racers. I even saw a couple people I knew.

Then I realized my error. The race tracker was off! For SOME reason, I believed the race app instead of other trackers we use. Race trackers NEVER work. They’re not accurate, and I really should’ve known better. And I was under the impression that Justin was making killer time. The time it was predicting could be something he could pull off and I believed it. I realized that if I had waited longer at Burrard Bridge, I would have definitely seen Justin coming over. Anyway, I saw my friend Niles, and not too long after I saw Justin. Because of the way the seawall is set up, I actually got to grab a few photos over a few spots.

The finish line wasn’t too far to go, so I told Justin I would meet him around the Convention Center. The nice thing is there are a ton of places for spectators to watch for their racers. Runners then get their medals, and their finisher hats, and proceed up the ramp toward to the Convention Center, where they can grab brunch and head inside for post race activities like massages.

Post Race

The race ends pretty close to the start, which again is awesome because we were staying in the area. We walked right up Burrard street back to the Hotel Vancouver to clean up and get ready to head back home. We had to skip the Sunset Festival because we had other plans that we needed to make. We’ve been to the festival in years past, and they are a blast. Outdoor yoga and a concert is an amazing way to end SeaWheeze. We didn’t believe it for years, until one of our friends convinced us that SeaWheeze was worth the price of entry. And we are so glad we finally listened! We’re definitely going to always put our names in for the SeaWheeze lottery.

We went for our favourite Chinese food in North Vancouver before we left, of course! Ming’s Garden is the best. And that basically wraps up how we did SeaWheeze weekend. We hope you enjoyed this SeaWheeze race recap.

Did you race SeaWheeze 2019? Have you run in other years? What was your experience like?

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