Day 9: Penticton – Summerland
in Uncategorized
Total Distance Travelled: 20KM
Total Distance Travelled Entire Trip: 422KM
Total Time: 1:52
Moving Time: 1:27
Today was in theory going to be a short day of cycling, but with the number of side trips I did I added at least another 20KM on my total today which doesn’t count towards my distance to Vancouver. I started off the day with an excellent breakfast at the Nikko B&B of waffles and sausage and then headed out to see the SS Sicamous, an old CPR lake boat. Unfortunately the Sicamous was closed due to preparations for the jazz festival. A friend spoke highly of Poplar Grove winery, so I decided to go there instead. The winery was about 6KM away from my B&B and featured beautiful views of the lake.
View from the winery
The wines were excellent, especially the rose – however due to space limitations I didn’t have room to take any wine back. Instead I opted to have a light lunch at the Vanilla Pod. The great thing about September after the long weekend is everything is dead tourist attraction wise. I was the only one doing a wine tasting at Poplar Grove, and there were only 2 or 3 other tables occupied while I was having lunch. My B&B hosts told me they had guests who were unable to get into the Vanilla Pod a few weeks ago. They had a delicious pasta with chorizo on special, so I went for it:
Lovely sparking rose….
Lovely sparkling rose….
After lunch it was time to find the original Penticton KVR station, I googled it and found out it still existed.
Penticton KVR station
Unfortunately it’s not publicly accessible, it houses a daycare and some other service based businesses. The architecture from the road is still very impressive though. It was finally time to grab my stuff from my B&B in Penticton and ride over to Summerland. The Okanagan reminds me of Los Angeles in a way, since like LA the various cities meld into each other. It’s hard to determine where Penticton ends and Summerland begins since the urban area never really stops.
In any event I found the KVR trail fairly easily, and it again provided excellent views of the lake as it climbed out of Penticton. The trail surface was fairly sandy, but it was still easily bikeable.
View of the lake
It didn’t take too long to run into active railway track – the Summerland tourist train.
Trout creek trestle
The trout creek trestle is one of the star attractions of the tourist train, at 73 meters high by 76 meters long it’s very impressive.
View from the trestle
After the trestle, the Trans Canada trail routes onto the road through Summerland. I biked over to my B&B to drop off my bags. On my wine tour, the guide highly recommended Eighth Generation vineyards for their ice wine, and since they were only located 6KM away I decided to bike over and check them out.
The ice wine was exceptional, it was sweet but with good acidity and flavor. You don’t want ice wine to be the equivalent of drinking maple syrup, it should have other flavors that round off the sweetness and good acidity to offset some of the sugars in the wine. While not cheap ($60), I couldn’t resist getting a bottle. According to the label fewer than 200 cases of it were made, so the wine really has a low production.
After the winery, I paid a visit to the Summerland Ornamental gardens.
Gardens
Although it was on the small side, the gardens were very well done. Unfortunately there was a heck of a climb on the road to get to them. You really start to appreciate rail trails when you go bike over roads with 4-6% grades. After visiting the gardens it was time to grab some dinner and head back to the B&B.