Thanksgiving Among the Sagebrush

Rachel and I headed out to Osoyoos on Saturday to spend the long weekend at R's aunt and uncle's place. Osoyoos is located in the Okanagan, near the US border on Lake Osoyoos in ...

We had the guest house


...all to ourselves. Here's the view from the deck:

On Sunday, we went to the Silver Sage Winery near Oliver. The wines were divine, especially their Sage Grand Reserve, a Gewurtztraminer that's been fermented with sage plants. Completely unlike any other wine I've tasted and utterly sublime (and I'm usually a red wine feller). I bought 2 bottles of it, one for Thanksgiving dinner and one for later, as well as two bottles of "The Flame" hot pepper aperitif wine, which I raved about in an earlier CLM post, a pinot noir and a couple other dessert wines. A wee splurge, but well worth it; anyone who puts such craftsmanship and flair into their products deserves the business. If you're ever in the Osoyoos/Oliver area, do yourself a favour and stop by Silver Sage. It's worth it for the vintner's patter alone, as she serves tasters at the bar.

After the tasting, we had lunch in Oliver and headed up into the hills, where we met this cow.

We stopped at a good vantage point for a view of Vaseux Lake (which I spoiled by putting us in the foreground):


Rachel in her best brooding Bronte pose:

On the way down, we startled a herd of California Bighorns. Here's a blurry shot of one jumping the fence between the road and a horse pasture, hot on the heels of his pal:

Thanksgiving dinner was grand; good company (R's mum, 2 aunts and their hubbies and Ron, a retired marine engineer from Lancashire), good food and lots of it. We ate royally the whole weekend really. Last night we had turkey leftovers while a house or two across the lake on the US side burned to the ground. Quite the blaze. The irony gods were at least kind enough not to make it happen on their Thanksgiving.

Lovely drive back today. Now to get some work done before I head out on the road for my last scheduled trip on Friday. My job's been abolished, as of the 23rd, so I'll be running as a spare until I take my holidays and get laid off. Pretty good luck, only having to work the spareboard for a week or so.