Biking to Brews in Penticton

After our side trip to E.C. Manning Provincial Park, we returned to the Okanagan Valley on Saturday, June 17, 2017. We checked into the Oxbow RV Resort and found it to be beautifully landscaped.  Here is the gazebo that served as our back yard:

After some chores and errands, we headed over to Dave Lopushinsky's and Leslie Manion's house for a barbeque. Turns out they are planning an RV trip across Canada and will be gone for several months. They planned a goodbye BBQ with all of their friends the same weekend we arrived. Not only that, but our friends Duane and Jean Matthes just happened to be driving to Alaska for a family wedding/reunion and planned to stop and see Dave and Leslie the same weekend. Unfortunately, we were so busy meeting all of Dave's and Leslie's friends, we forgot to take photos.

However, notably, we met Tim and Janet Watts, co-owners of Kettle Valley Winery, who invited us up to their vineyard to learn more about wine-making and viticulture.  We also met Mel and Jolene, owners of Anand Orchards, who cultivate haskap berries, which are like elongated blueberries that thrive in northern climates and soils. We had never heard of haskap berries, and it was fascinating to learn all about them.

The next morning, Sunday, June 18, dawned clear and still.  We took a coffee walk down to Skaha Lake and got our first look at it:

After breakfast, we decided with Dee Dee and Tony to bicycle around Penticton to all of the breweries in the city.  Here we are in our biking regalia.  Tony wanted a photo at the local Elks Lodge because, as a member, he tries to send photos of local lodges back to his home lodge.

Our first stop was Tin Whistle Brewery, which had a very small tasting room that was, luckily, open on Sunday only because one of the management people had to be in the brewery to handle another matter.  That was fine with us!

From Tin Whistle Brewery, we pedalled up to Okanagan Lake, whose south shore lies on the north end of Penticton.  As a result, Penticton is one of only two cities in the world that is situated between two lakes!  (The other is Wasilla, Alaska.)

The Okanagan Lakefront is a tourist mecca, with lots of motels, hotels, tourist attractions, kids' adventure parks, and the like.  We had heard about the "Peach on the Beach" and we wanted to find it.  Find it we did:

Nearby, the city commissioned a statue of three children at play on the beach.  However, with the extraordinarily high water levels in the lake this year (similar problems plague all of the communities on the east side of the Cascades and Sierra), the statues are several feet out in the water.  Some humorous citizen(s) must have worried about the statues' safety, because they decked the artwork in life vests:

By the time we finished exploring the lakefront, it was lunchtime, so we decided to have lunch at our next brewery stop:  Bad Tattoo.  We enjoyed some very tasty flatbread pizza, and (in our opinion) by far the tastiest beer of the day:

Next was a stop at the Cannery Brewery:

We finished up, heading home, by stopping at the Barley Mill Pub, which brews its own beer.  Our waitress was kind enough to snap a photo of us enjoying their libations:

Cheers and beers!  干杯!  на здоровья!  Prost! à votre santé!