Exploring Okanagan Wineries & Picking Up Our Campervan

A Western Canada Road Trip – Day 7

After our couple of days hiking the Sea to Sky Corridor (Chief & Garibaldi), we spent a few days in the Okanagan region with Callum’s brother’s girlfriend’s family, golfing and boating.

Okanagan was the beginning of our campervan road trip. This ended up being a life changing experience and reinvigorated a love for camping, I had not really experienced since being a kid.

Picking Up Our Campervan in Okanagan Region

We rented our camper van from a company called Vantastic Rentals (unfortunately they no longer operate 😢). The owner named our vehicle Van Gogh (we loved this).

We knew we wanted to head into the Okanagan Valley and visit some wineries, but we didn’t have plans on where we were going to camp this night or any wineries booked.

We decided we would be spontaneous. Also we planned this trip pretty last minute.

Discovering Wineries in Okanagan Valley

I did some research on wineries before we went, but I didn’t really know how our timing would work out or if something would be too crowded for my COVID comfort, so I didn’t book anything.

I wanted to go to Gray Monk, but it would take 45 minutes to get in, so we decided we would carry on our Okanagan campervan road trip and went to Arrowleaf Cellars instead. We did a tasting and it was a nice experience. The flavour was good too so we bought a bottle of wine.

After our wine tasting at Arrowleaf Cellars, we decided to go to O’Rourke’s Peak Cellars Garden Bistro. We had dinner and a wine flight. I had one of the best mushroom pizzas I have ever had.

NOTE FROM 2024: This is still one of the best mushroom pizzas I have had. I look back on this afternoon fondly. I had a really nice time. The wine was great and the food was great and the company was great.

Campervan Logistics (Just Groceries)

After dinner, we headed back into Vernon to grab groceries before continuing. Since we were in the campervan, we needed campervan friendly groceries.

We ended up buying a lot of Sidekicks, a pack of bagels, chips, curry, peanut butter, bread, Cliff bars, anything we could take for snacks or lunches while hiking. This wasn’t our full list, but you get the idea.

Cherryville RV Park/Golf Course

As we had nowhere planned to stay for the night, we started driving through the scenic route to what would end up being where we would sleep for the night.

We decided to take the scenic route, which meant we somehow ended up off of a main road (I feel like logging trucks or something like this probably take this road). This was problematic for a couple of reasons:

1. We were looking for somewhere to pull over for the night, but we were not on a main road.
2. It got dark pretty quickly and we were driving through windy, dirt, mountain roads that are for sure not that well maintained.

I was scared and didn’t want to pull over on the side of the road (we did at one point for photos and survived). Callum did see a baby bear run across the road at blue hour (I only saw its baby bear butt so I don’t count this as me seeing a bear).

Once we got down from there and back on the main road, we looked for a place we could stay. I had limited phone service, which was an issue since I didn’t know if there was somewhere we could camp coming up.

I found this place called Cherryville RV Park/Golf Course. This was actually a great place to stop. From the photos, you might not think much about it, but the stars at night are incredible.

Every time I watch this timelapse, I am filled with joy. You can see our shadows (maybe just Callum’s) for a moment. We just chilled and watched TV we downloaded for offline use.

It was a nice night.

At this point, I didn’t know what tomorrow has in store, but I knew we were taking the scenic route.

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Prepare for your Trip

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