Ciao Bella Winery

Ciao Bella is a family-owned winery, and if you could guess by the name, they do wines in the Italian style! They have a cute garden area where we were able to do our tastings outside. There was food for purchase, and plenty of eating and sitting areas to enjoy food and wine.

Kalala Organic Estate Winery

We really like Kalala and always take friends and family here. The story behind the name as well as the wine itself is wonderful. Here’s a detailed post from one of our visits.

Black Swift Vineyards

We discovered Black Swift Vineyards through the hatch wines. Their outdoor patio and picnic area have views of the lake, and they are also dog-friendly. Here’s a detailed post from our first visit.

Fitzpatrick Family Vineyards

Fitzpatrick is technically Peachland but it’s a perfect stop to add to a “West Kelowna” wine tour. You can do a tasting (we love their bubbly) as well as eat at the restaurant with views of the lake. It could be a way to start your West Kelowna wine tour, from the most southerly point and head back toward West Kelowna.. however, with the views, you’re best to finish here.

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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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Would we do this race again?! Read on and see! This race is part of the Pace Trail Series, put on by Race Director Rene Unser. In my opinion it’s the Kelowna equivalent to Vancouver and area Coast Mountain Trail Series put on by Race Director Gary Robbins. With the Nimble Bear race, medals are home made, and top finishers win home baked apple pies! You had a chance to win a pie through your package pickup, but sadly neither of us “won” any pies.

Race Prep

Nimble Bear 25km was the same weekend as Justin’s birthday. So our family had come in for the weekend to celebrate as well as spectate. You can bet we did the usual wining and dining. We tried to make sure we were eating a lot of carb-rich foods, and stuffing our faces with Haribo gummy candies. They are honestly some of the best food for carbo-loading because they pack so many grams of carbs in such a tiny size!

Race Morning

Since there was a 50km, the 25km runners didn’t have to start the day until 9:30am! This is probably one of the latest morning starts we’ve ever had. We got to wake up at a normal hour, and proceed with our standard morning routine. We decided to have eggs on english muffins, with a slice of back bacon. It was so delicious, and kept me full all morning and about 3/4 of the race! We had coffee, and then walked over to the race start for the race briefing.

Race Start

This part makes me the most crazy. The announcer was warming up the crowds and talking about how this was the first race of the season for many, and asking how many people were prepared. Everyone was laughing about how underprepared and undertrained they were. Well guess what, when the gun went off and we finally cleared the congestion from a bunch of runners trying to squeeze through a tiny gap in the fence separating Rose Valley Park from the elementary school, I was left in the dust!! And left in the dust for most of the day, I was! I would be muttering about that a lot when I was alone on the course.

Race Course

The race course in Rose Valley for Nimble Bear is absolutely stunning. Rose Valley Park is a great place to hike or mountain bike, as well as trail run. It’s a lot of single track, and there are tons of great trails and views. The course start was congested at the beginning because the starting area is adjacent to an elementary school, and then you go through a formal opening in the fence to head into the park. It created quite a bottle neck because people with broad shoulders had to turn sideways and shuffle through.

For the entirety of the race, there would be plenty of 50km runners zip past us since it was a 2-loop course for them. It was incredible to see how fast they ran! I never passed a 50km runner once.

There was a lot of up at the beginning of the race, and we got to run towards this gnarly tree on the top of this hill that always catches my eye. It was a little steep there and I personally felt myself scrambling a bit at times. Weirdly enough, there was a family of 3-4 coming towards us from that area, and I wondered how they had got there as one of them was wearing flip flops!

The course eventually flattened, and then there was a there-and-back/lollipop towards the first aid station. The best thing about trail races are the real food at the aid stations! We’re talking slices of watermelon, candy, chips, pretzels, muffins, ugh the best!!

I recall The City of the the Edge of Forever was the most insane climb ever. This was one point on the race where we were “running” up double black mountain bike trails! Like how insane are trail runners?! While I was struggling to just keep my feet moving up and onward on the million switchbacks, I could hear the sound of clicking approaching behind me. The sound got closer and closer, until I could see it was a 50km trail runner with poles who was RUNNING this ascent. I need to train harder, because I could barely made this hike up, let alone run it! It was amazing to see the sheer strength of trail runners.

Justin waited for me at the second aid station, and we finished the rest of the race together. It was a suffer fest at this point, and we were both getting tired. But it was really enjoyable to run together as we we kept each other entertained, and I managed not to full out cry even though I was on the verge of tears at one point from fatigue and frustration. Eventually we recognized some of the trails we’ve hiked together before, so that was a glimmer of hope that the race would soon be coming to an end.

There was a band playing at the finish line, and the noise was the sweetest sound after 25km of trampling through the woods. We ran the descent and headed towards the flags and Solomon finisher arch. We got hugs from the Race Director, Rene, and chatted with her for a couple minutes before we hobbled away.

Overall Thoughts

We definitely need to put in serious training to give this another go. Way. More. Training. For many years our first race of the year was in May, and Nimble Bear was an entire month earlier. I refused to run outside all winter and since our move, we ran all winter indoors on a treadmill. Kelowna has real winters with snow that sticks around, unlike Vancouver with the rain. I am just not interested in running in snow or icy conditions.

I would like redemption at this race, so we definitely will need to have a structured training plan for when we tackle this race next time. Nimble Bear 25km was hard as hell, but super rewarding because of the effort required as the views that were earned. The snacks/aid stations are also infinitely better than road races which is another great motivator. I’m a little annoyed that the shirts we got with registration run super small, so I’m not sure how much we’ll wear them. But overall, it was a great race. Grass roots, local, well-organized, with a challenging route and awesome views.

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