Long weekend at the Spiller Estate B&B

My wife and I had to go up to the interior of BC to clean out an old storage unit of the junk I don’t need anymore, and close it up for good.  Luckily for us this went faster than we’d expected.  Instead of 1-2 days of cleaning and carting stuff off to the thrift store, it was 2 hours of sorting through what I wanted, and left the rest to be picked up by the thrift store on Monday.

This left us a 3-day weekend with no obligations, and no plans.  Since we were a short drive from a ton of family, as well as some of the nicest vacation spots in a variety of small towns nearby, we had two choices: Either try to cram as much visiting into one weekend as we possibly could and couch-surf, or play tourists for a weekend and enjoy ourselves.

So after a nice lunch where we did some research on our iPhones, we ended up driving a couple hours to Penticton, a fairly small town in the heart of British Columbia’s winery region.  Googling for “Winery B&B” for our area turned up a few results, but the one that caught our eye was Spiller’s Corner B&B & Winery.  A nice heritage B&B, right on a vineyard, and close to several wineries.  We called and booked the room before we got the bill for lunch, hopped in the car, and made our way over.

The weather was fantastic, and since we arrived fairly early, we were greeted with a free wine tasting of the wines made right on that vineyard.  We discovered that it’s a “No-Host” B&B which I’d never heard of before.  Someone comes in the afternoon to clean the rooms, and someone else comes in the morning to cook breakfast, but beyond that the guests have the whole house and grounds to themselves (with the exception of the separate building used for wine tastings, which is open from 11:00am – 5:00pm).

We spent our days there just relaxing and enjoying ourselves; wandering to the different wineries and bought a few bottles of the tastier ones we found; we sat in the sun tanning, reading, or playing cards; we even bought some groceries from the local Safeway in town and barbecued some salmon for dinner.  And in the farm across the street there was a mare and newborn foal that were absolutely adorable.  After the breakfast the cook made for us one morning, we took our morning coffee and walked across the street and visited the baby horse that adorably found everything around it new and adventurous.

All in all it was exactly what the both of us needed.  A break from the fast-paced city life, a relaxing road trip through the country, listening to the birds, the wind, tasting wine and catching some sun.  With the exception of lunch at a restaurant one afternoon with terrible service of epic proportions – I’d advise against eating at The Hooded Merganser, unless you feel you have better luck than we did – our trip had the most relaxation packed into a 3 day weekend of any other I’ve had.

I consider myself lucky to live in such a richly diverse province, and to have such a wonderful wife to share it with.