Day 10 - Kelowna to Seattle
Halfway home!
300 miles to Mercer Island!
We started the day with another Okanagan Valley winery, the
Summerhill Pyramid Winery in South Kelowna. Our timing wasn’t perfect, as we showed up right after a
tour bus full of Japanese tourists who evidently had the same plan. Apparently, the staff was able to
identify that we didn’t exactly fit the ethnic mold of the other
visitors and set aside a separate area for us to sample their various wines. After another tasting, including some
ice wines which we had never previously tasted, we settled on two more bottles
to carry with us on our trip. (Cliff
Claven fact: Ice wines can only be grown in extreme northern climates; the
grapes are plucked at temperatures of -7 thru -10 degrees (Celsius) and only
one drop of juice is extracted from each grape.) It was very sweet, and hopefully will take us quite a while
to go through the small bottle we purchased. So, any readers of this blog who stop by to visit us in
Charlottesville within the first few weeks of our moving in, you are welcome to
try a glass or two.
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| Welome sign to the Summerhill Pyramid Winery, Kelowna, British Columbia |
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| Greg & Aimee on the Patio at the Summerhill Pyramid Winery |
After Kelowna we got back on the road for the final stretch
of road. Three hours into the leg
we crossed back into the U.S., a significant milestone for two people
accustomed to communicating with the outside world so easily. We turned our phones back on and they
both started ringing with all the updates and messages we had missed for the
previous 10 days. Going without email,
phones, and internet (except for a few nights in some hotel rooms) was more
difficult than we had expected.
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| Welcome to the USA sign at the US/Canada border |
2700 miles into the trip, we pulled into Grandma &
Grandpa Versaw’s driveway in Mercer Island, Washington. Even though we had a mini-break at
Banff, this felt more like a vacation, as we knew we had 3 nights of the
comforts of home and sleeping in familiar spaces. We had initially planned to go to Safeco Field to watch the
Mariners play the Orioles, however those plan quickly fizzled, everyone was
just happy to sit down and not worry about doing anything for at least a little
while (this decision was almost second-guessed, however, when the Orioles
pitcher carried a perfect game into the seventh inning. Good thing that didn’t happen, as I’m
not sure Greg would’ve forgiven anyone for a long time had he missed that.
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| Alex hanging out in a tree at Grandma & Grandpa Versaw's home in Mercer Island. |
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| Ashleigh posing by the small pond at Grandma & Grandpa Versaw's |
Tomorrow: staying in Seattle.
Wildlife sightings:
none
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