Family Travel: What to see and do in Summerland, BC

Earlier this week, I shared PART 1 of our recent trip to Summerland. We were super lucky to be hosted by the Summerland Waterfront Resort & Spa.  If you want to do Summerland right, this is where you stay.  Read all about it by clicking here.

For this post, I’ll be bringing you along on a little tour of Summerland, BC and surrounding areas in the Southern Okanagan.  Buckle your seatbelts!! 😛

All 10 families on the VancouverMom.ca press trip piled into a bus and we were guided by Tour Host extraordinaire, Karen of Authentically Okanagan.  I’m not sure how many organized bus tours I’ve done in my life, but it’s definitely countable on one hand.  This one was a ton of fun with all the kids on board and the ability to just sit back and be driven around was so luxurious.

We started our day at Okanagan Crush Pad, British Columbia’s first purpose-built custom winemaking facility.  The kids headed off to check out the chickens on site, while the adults got our wine-tasting on.  (Yes, at 10am!) It was glorious!

Some of the wines you may recognize that come from Okanagan Crush Pad are Haywire and Narrative. The kids had a great time hanging with the chickens while we learned about some of the different wines we were sampling.  It was such a great way to kick off the day, not to mention a beautiful location overlooking Lake Okanagan and vineyards as far as the eye can see!

Next stop: Summerland Sweets and Sleeping Giant Fruit Winery for some syrup sampling for the kids and fruit wine sampling for the big kids. This is one of our favuorite outings in Summerland! We make sure to hit this up every summer!

The kids got to sample these delicious fruit syrups, while the parents…

…of course did some more wine tasting :P.  The wines here were made with fruits, so they tasted very unique!

PS. The views from Summerland Sweets/ Sleeping Giant Fruit Winery are also gorgeous!

We piled back into the bus and made our way out of Summerland into the Oliver Osoyoos Wine Country to experience the much-anticipated Ticklerberry’s.  I couldn’t believe I had never been here before! It was the sweetest little candy/chocolate/ice cream shoppe!

We all got ice creams (and I definitely also came away with fudge and other goodies!) and sat out in the sun for a little moment of relaxation before heading off to our next destination.  The most amazing group photo of all the kids presented itself!

Happy kiddos, happy parents!

After all the ice creams were devoured and the sticky hands were cleaned up, we were off to the Pig Out Festival.  If you can time your holiday to overlap with this event next year, I highly recommend it.  It was an all-day wine-tasting, food-sampling extravaganza where the kids got to play and the adults enjoyed the sunshine, live music, amazing wines and delicious food!

This annual vineyard pig roast brings together chefs eight local restaurants, including Platinum Bench Bakery, Watermark Beach Resort, Miradoro at Tinhorn Creek Vineyards and Covert Farms.

We had such an amazing day!! A huge thank you to Karen, our guide, to all the shops and stops along the way for hosting us, and to VancouverMom.ca for inviting us to partake in that wonderful family weekend away!  I’ll be back in Summerland this summer and I can’t wait to do it all all over again!