Life On The Ranch: Week 1 Summary
- Kelly McKenna
- Nov 16, 2020
- 4 min read
So, we did it. After 18 amazing months living and working in Vancouver, BC, we sold pretty much all of our stuff, packed up our car and drove four hours inland.
Our new home, is the absolutely beautiful Myra Canyon Ranch, perched in the hills just above Kelowna, BC, and we will be here for the next six months.
We have lived here for just over two weeks and have already had a multitude of adventures. Here’s an overview of what we got up to in week 1…
Drove to Kelowna and stayed at the Best Western Plus
Back home, you can start and end a rental contract on any day of the month, meaning you can effectively move house on any date you choose. In BC, we have found that typically contracts start on the 1st or 15th of the month, but end the day before meaning for the night of 31st October, we were as good as homeless.
We originally decided to treat ourselves by staying at the Sparkling Hill Resort in Vernon, however, at 6pm the day before our stay they called to say due to a Covid outbreak, they had to close the entire resort for 10 days.
Considering this was only 16 hours prior to our key handover and the fact that we were on a crazy cleaning spree, we were surprisingly zen about it all. Rich hopped online and found us the Best Western Plus Kelowna Hotel and Suites.
In the end, it actually all worked out for the best. We were so tired after cleaning, sleeping on the floor and driving to Kelowna, that we ended up having a quick dip in the pool and the lush outdoor hot tub and then ordering takeaway before getting an early night. It also saved us an extra hour of driving and a lot of money! Hopefully one day we will get to the fancy resort and be able to make the most of it!
Visited our first Winter Winery
After checking out of the hotel, we were once again effectively homeless. With four hours to kill before we could take possession of our new home, we decided to head to the Mission Hill Family Estate Winery, to try out their wine-paired Harvest Lunch.
The Mission Hill Winery is absolutely stunning and it was a crisp, but beautiful day, so we took some time to walk around the grounds, before settling down to our lunch.
We were offered a glass of rose as we were shown to our seats and then we got a new glass of wine to match each course.
Rich went for the duck and scallops, whilst I chose the opposite – roasted carrot and chicken – and we had every intention of sharing a little bit of everything. Unfortunately, it was all so good, neither of us were interested in giving up our own dishes for a bite of the other!
As Rich was driving, he was only taking small sips of each of his paired wines, before passing them to me. By the end of the meal, I’d had close on five glasses of wine, which led to me getting very excited about some deer eating fruit off the vines and stumbling around the supermarket trying to figure out what we were going to have for dinner!
Overall, we had a brilliant time at our wine pairing lunch, we’d absolutely recommend it to anyone and we can’t wait to explore more of Kelowna’s winery scene over the coming months.
Got a small shock when taking out the recycling…
After settling in for a couple of days, we decided to walk around the ranch a little bit and do our first rubbish run. We’d been advised that the bins were out in the barn, but imagine our surprise when we walked in to find a full deer carcass hanging from the rafters!
Fortunately, neither of us are vegetarians, and are actually a little hopeful that we might be the lucky recipients of a winning hunt in the future!
Started getting ready for winter with our new tyres
We were really lucky that we got great conditions driving across the Coquihalla Highway as it can be really treacherous. Whilst we can legally drive around Kelowna, and a lot of BC, on “Mud and Snow” tyres, we decided pretty rapidly after driving up the hill to the ranch that we needed to invest in some heavy duty winter tyres.
So in week one, with snow forecast for the following week, we headed down to the town and dropped Nelly the Nissan off at the garage for a bit of an upgrade.
For the third time that week, that basically rendered us helpless without any means to get back home. We filled the gap, by wandering around one of Kelowna’s retail parks, getting lunch at Milestones and hanging out with some questionable folk at Tim Horton’s waiting for a call to say we had wheels once again.
Rich, in all of his wisdom, hadn’t booked the time off work, so he pretty much had to set up an office at each place we stopped! The locals must have thought we were complete weirdos!
And then, just like that, our first week in Kelowna had come to an end. We are undoubtedly going to be happy in our little winter base, but time seems to be going so quickly already!
If you’ve been to Kelowna, I’d love to hear from you. Tell us what we absolutely can’t miss out on by dropping a comment in the box below!
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