East of Kootenay Lake

Today we decided that, even though, we have been enjoying the west side of Kootenay Lake, we should venture the East side. We set out early this afternoon!

Stop 1: to take a mandatory picture with the Crawford Bay sign. We also continued to drive down the road where we pulled off and found a quaint little beach.
Stop 2: to take a scenic picture in front of the lake and mountains.
Stop 3: Pepper People. This was a cool little Artisian with stained glass, sculptures, pickled peppers, garlic scapes, pickles and hot sauce! This was my first time ever hearing about garlic scapes so we picked some up and continued on our way.
Stop 4: The Glass House. I cannot, for the life of me, remember if we had stopped there before. It is a neat house. However it is also a bit morbid when you consider that it was made from 500,000 embalming fluid bottles. There is beautiful views, a lot of gorgeous gardens, and even more creepy gnomes. The lady who sold us the tickets gave us some info on what to do when we reached Creston.
Stop 5: another scenic picture, overlooking beautiful farmland.
Stop 6: Wynwood Winery. We walked into the tasting room, where another family was occupying all the seats. I am happy they were there because the young girl informed me of the wasp I had riding passenger in my hair. We went outside, Chris calmly swiped it out of my hair, while I panicked. We came back in and as the family left, we took our seats. The man helping us, Christoph, was very chatty which was nice. He told us about Dr. Bethune, a canadian doctor who helped a lot of people in China. According to Christoph, this is why Chinese people like Canadians. I have yet to know if this is who the village of Bethune is named after. We continued to chat about the bear problems in the area, the ground quality, and a bit of history with wine. They have a blood hound, named Tremour. He was very friendly and took a liking to us. He walked very funny and has obviously had a busy life protecting the vineyard from bears and cougars. We bought a couple bottles of wine, and made our way towards Creston.
Stop 7: Columbia Brewery. This was a quick stop as no more tours were running today. We look forward to doing a tour on our way through on Monday.
Stop 8: Skimmerhorn Winery. This winery had a completely different feeling than Wynnwood. Wynnwood felt very rustic, welcoming, and relaxed. Skimmerhorn, on the other hand, was more modern, and organized. That being said, both had friendly staff and great wine. We had read that Skimmerhorn has a bistro that runs from 12-3 Wednesday - Sunday and 5-8 on Friday and Saturday. Lucky for us, today is Friday. The menu is laid out in tapas style. This menu is all homemade (cheese included, YUM), and locally sourced. We started with marinated olives, lemon ricotta and toasted sourdough. Our next dish, and my favorite, was green beans, over a onion labneh, with candied bacon.. huge chunks of candied bacon. Onto the next dish, a carrot dish this also came with toasted sour dough and boursain. The sauce over the carrots was brown sugar, cinnamon and mustard. Patatas bravas was next, with a red pepper jam and paprika aioli. Another favorite of mine and Chris's favorite was a caprese salad. This was a bit untraditional, with bumblebee tomatoes, marinated olives and creamy cow feta. Let me remind you, it was homemade and AMAZING. (Chris also really like the patatas bravas, it was a very close second). We then had sweet corn, gnocchi, with paprika aioli. This was a gnocchi made with a pastry dough, instead of potatoe which made it very light. We finished with a chocolaté pot de crème (Chris's favorite) and a blueberry panna cotta (my favorite). We started at 5, in the light, with an amazing view of the Skimmerhorn Mountains. We finished around 8 when the sun had pretty well set behind the mountains to the west.
We are now on our way back to the cabin, on the very curvy 3A. It was an amazing day, with no schedule, and plenty of time to soak in our surroundings.Read more