Day 4 Continued

We left in the morning (Monday, July 11) to go to Kelowna to meet Art, Jenene and Sophia at their hotel. The view on the way there was not too shabby. They stayed at a really nice Best Western for one night, so we joined them in the morning for a swim before they had to check out. The hot tubs were outside and the grounds were quite lovely. Jared had really been wanting to hit up a Kelly O'Bryan's (an Irish pub restaurant), so we decided to drive downtown for lunch. We had trouble finding parking, so we ended up parking about 10 minutes away and then enjoying a nice walk in downtown Kelowna. There were interesting things to see!

We ate outside on the upstairs balcony and it was right by the water and I just loved it!

The washroom was beautiful, so I quickly took pictures before someone walked in. It's not often I see nice wooden doors in public washrooms. Both my sister and I ordered Irish Stew in a bread bowl. It was delicious! The view from where we ate I don't think these 2 cousins could look more different, unless Sophia was black. I guess that's what happens when one sister marries a blond-haired blue-eyed man and the other marries a half Filipino and one quarter Portuguese man! After lunch, we walked around by the water. We then drove to Gyro Beach and spent a couple of hours there. You can see the big zipline that goes into the water and Kiera and Haley both had fun on that. Blake fell off of it (at the beginning he fell into the water instead of holding on until the end), so he didn't try it after that. This was Art + Jenene's first time visiting Kelowna and Art said they would love to visit again. I second that! After a day that flew by way too quickly, it was time to say goodbye. Our visit was short but incredibly sweet! On the way back to the van, someone had some beautiful flowers on their front yard, so I had to get a picture. I guess we tired the kids out! Butt Road...hee hee! I thought the houses built on top of hills were really interesting! Summerland is where we stayed. Our van turned over 200,000 kms while we were there. This was right in Summerland...so pretty! Thus concludes day 4. I'm not sure if I'll get this trip posted by Christmas, but that's my goal!

Where We Stayed

I have to break up day 4 into two blog posts because there are just too many pictures and I didn't want to have to cut a whole bunch out. Before we left for the day, I took pictures of Jared's Aunt's house. It is a 100-year-old house which she has completely renovated on the inside and she has redone most (or maybe all) of the yard, too.

Everything might be bigger in Texas, but apparently some things are bigger in B.C., too, like pinecones.

She had such pretty flowers all over the place.

From the back of her side yard, you can see Lake Okanagan.

Her house would be considered "out in the country" but there are no such thing as gravel roads. There are MANY vineyards in her area, including her next door neighbor and her neighbor across the street. Her backyard The kids would go play out in the "garden" which is a path that goes around her house and there are plants everywhere.

We ate outside a couple of times and I loved being surrounded by the tall vines. It was nice and sheltered.

Her long driveway

This was right beside the end of her driveway...there was a separate little yard area.

The view from the end of her driveway

I will continue day 4 in my next blog post!