Day 8

After a early night last night we were able to get up and check out by 10am. First stop of the day was back to Gerigher Brothers winery, to buy some icewine. Yesterday we were too close to closing time and would have had to carry the bottle as we walked around places - much easier to come back today for it. We were the last customers they served yesterday, and we were the first today, arriving shortly after 10am in the morning. Next, we were onto Inniskillin Winery. Here - everyone was hard at work pressing grapes - it wasn't too early for them! Inside, things weren't quite so organised as they assistant hadn't yet even got the bottles of wine out! While he pottered away we got chatting, and he decided it was quiet enough to give us a little tour and explain the wine making process there. These guys machine pick all their grapes, and over the last few days we've had many different opinions impressed on us about the different pro's and con's of this method of harvesting. With the process discussed, we headed inside learning about the history of the vineyard in the area and how it is so loosely related to the better known Inniskillin in Niagra. Not just famous for icewine, we kicked off the day (barely even 10.30am) with some more tasting, but opted to limit our tasting to just the red and ice wines. Nearly an hour later we left, with a much greater appreciation for the process and some of the local business practises in the area. We had one final stop to make, back at Burrowing Owl. After a day of tasting, Clare had decided on a wine she wanted to buy, and so we headed back up over the hills to collect it. Oliver well and truly done (9 wineries visited and tasted at over 2 days.... fairly impressive!) we headed back down south to Osoyoos. When we had visited on Monday, we had missed the last tour of the day, so wanted to get down and have a look at a tour on the native reserve. En route, we tried to stop at a fruit stand. BC is famous for fruit, and there are signs every 100m or so along the roads advertising fresh fruit. Unfortunately, the signs don't go away when the season is wrong, so we had spent a large amount of our time travelling slowing down (annoying all the cars below us!) but never pulling in as when we got close we discovered they shutters were down. The visitor information centre had advised we should try out a certain place, so we pulled off the road on the way down to Osoyoos following her directions. The recommended place was a fruit wholesaler who also served a lot of the locals... what she hadn't mentioned is that they close for lunch, between 12 and 1pm and we had arrived at 12.02. As our tour was at 1pm we had to give up on the fruit. Luckily we stopped at a quiet road junction not far up the road where there was an apple tree with some ripe apples hanging just over the boundary.... ripe for the picking. Jumping out the car, we saved the poor apples from hitting the ground just as they were falling (cough cough) to join the other fallen apples on the ground. Satisfied with our BC fruit crop we carried on to Nk'Mip Winery on the reserve and had lunch in the car.

Nk'Mip is a very popular winery, as every time we've been in - the small tasting bar is full of people. Knowing we'd be tasting on the tour we hung around looking at the bits for sale and the awesome views over the patio area. Eventually we were able to catch someones attention and the tour was started just for us. We were given some background on the winery and the band of 430 natives who ran the 33 acre reserve as we went round the winery being shown the background stuff that went on.

Eventually we left, and our Okanagan wine journey was over... but there was just one more place to visit as we headed out west. Forbidden Fruit was a small winery, tucked at the bottom of a steep valley near Keremous. An organic fruit grower, they offered fruit and wine and had been recommended to us by the visitor centre. It was certainly an interesting place to visit, but even they had sold out of fruit!

Our journey west, tracking along the US Border continued. We had planned to stop in Princeton for the night, but we arrived there at 4pm - far too early to stop. The weather was looking good, and there didn't seem to be much going on in Princeton, so we kept pushing west. Destination: Hope.

Barely out of the Princeton area, we started climbing again. We'd been pretty close to crossing the snow line all the way to Princeton, and as we left we climbed above it. So far above it that the snow was inches deep and we were still climbing. Stopping to attach the camera to the roof gave us an opportunity to see how much the temperature had dropped as well and the clouds surrounding us meant that more snow would likely be falling over night. Good thing we had carried on past Princeton, cause this pass could get closed by the night. It didn't take us long, but darkness was starting to fall as we dropped out of the mountains to Hope. The scenery was spectacular around here, as Hope is tucked at the bottom of some large mountain, at the east end of the Fraser Valley. Its been used in a number of films for it scenery (Rambo most prominently) and has a old railway line linking it through to Penticton and Oliver (the Kettle Valley Railway). Hopefully, tomorrow we would have a chance to check them all out. It took a few attempts to navigate our way to the motel we had chosen from the tourist booklet and once we were checking in we weren't sure it was the right choice as a little Asian lady checked us in and there was a struggle to communicate. Finally we were set, and cooked up a simple dinner. The smell in the room reminded me of nursing homes, and the bathroom layout was exceptionally weird. The bathroom had no sink in, just a toilet and a bath. Then, the kitchen had 2 sinks. 1 a normal kitchen sink, the other, a standard bathroom sink.... just in the wrong room. The big selling point of this place however was the jacuzzi. After a long day wining and driving (not the best combination!) we were both sore and tired. A jacuzzi seemed like the best thing. The motel person had said she would open the pool area for us (at least we think she did...) and so she had. The lights were off, the covers were all on and everything was cold, but it was open.

We dragged the cover off the jacuzzi and set the timer. The water was room temperature, not exactly relaxing. While we waited for it to warm up, we fired up the sauna. The sauna was much quicker to warm up and soon we were needing to cool down so headed back to the jacuzzi. It was barely above room temperature but perfect for cooling down, before heading back to the sauna. After an hour of relaxing, we called it a night and shut everything back up.

In preparation for the border crossing tomorrow we had emptied the car and started consolidating bags. We'd heard that things could get fairly tough crossing the border - listing everything you were bringing in and anything missed could cause the entire contents of the car to be seized. The border cops also had the right to search electronic media - laptops, phones, e-books the works. It seems like border control cops have the right to do practically anything they feel like so we wanted to be prepared.

After a tough day it was good to chill out for the evening, and the perfect opportunity for an early night. It was strange to think that this would be our last night in Canada!