Road Trip!

There is a commercial here (for beer, I think) that says something like "Canada has more square feet of awesomeness per person than anywhere else in the world." I'm going to go ahead and agree. We just got back from a road trip to British Columbia and I'm IN LOVE with that province now. Let's move. No Baker Hughes operations there? Oh well. Let's open a B&B and vineyard.

First we drove to Summerland, BC which is a teeny little town along the Okanagon Lake and this was our view:

This area is Canada's wine country, and it is LOVELY. It pretty much looks like this where ever you go:

We stopped and had wine-tastings at many wineries along the lake. All of which have different specialities (you can't get THIS anywhere else in the Okanagon!) and different personalities. This one was my favorite because it is teeny and very cute. It's called Elephant Island and they make fruit wine (surprisingly delicious!).

We had  a beautiful lunch at this one called Hillside and sat out a little rainstorm.

This is a shot from the bottom of that little tower:

Peter's favorite (I loved it too, but it's numero 2 for me) was Mission Hill which was just on another level. It was very beautiful but very commerical. They have worked hard to ensure every detail of the place is pristine and enchanting. We took a tour here including a lovely "viewing" cellar and had another wine tasting (natch).

BC is so green and the wild flowers are gorgeous! For the purple ones I made Peter pull over on the side of the highway so I could take some pics. I could have just set up a tent and lived there. The smell was gorgeous!

And, of course, the highlight of the Okanagon portion of our trip was seeing the lake monster Ogopogo, cousin to Loch Ness. Who knew it would be bright lime green (with antennae, apparently)?

Then we drove to Vancouver to meet up with our friends Tim and Christine (of whom I have no pictures...I promise they were there too).  It's so super cool there. Mountians, ocean, huge parks, very dog friendly, great shopping and restaurants, super hip downtown. I'm packing right now...

We were privilaged to take Tim's Driving Tour of Vancouver in which we saw the University of BC, some beaches and ocean...

A BALD EAGLE sitting on her nest (I'm sorry the pic is tiny, we didn't have our zoom lens with us - damn!) right in the middle of a neighborhood...

and Granville Island (a sweet little island with a farmers market and loads of hippies)...

We had an AWESOME time in Vancouver. Seriously, I'm loading my stuff into my car right now.

Then we drove home. And was it a boring long drive, you ask?

Nope.

We saw a Grizzly bear

and a mama Black bear and her two baby cubs!

Lucky lucky lucky!

We're so blessed to get to live in and explore such a beautiful country!