Page 134 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL WINTER 2024 SCOTLAND

by still-deep mounds of snow. We then
hopped on the Peak Express Chairlift, which
took us still higher to the Cloudraker Sky‐
bridge and the Raven’s Eye Lookout.
Dinner that night was at the Wild Blue
Restaurant and Bar in Whistler Village, which
was recently named one of Canada’s Top 10
Best New Restaurants for some Effingham
oysters from Barkley Sound on the West Side
of Vancouver Island and bluefin tuna.
The next morning, I joined a tour and rode
a mountain bike around Lost Lake, which
offered excellent views across the water and
back up at the mountain slopes. I lunched at
the Robert Trent Jones-designed Fairmont
Chateau Whistler Golf Club on a salmon and
beet salad.
I bid adieu to Whistler and drove northeast
to Cache Creek, an agricultural area of rolling
grasslands and desert hills that was once on
the Cariboo Wagon Road. On the way, I
stopped at Fort Berens Estate Winery, which
raises Cabernet Franc, Merlot and other va‐
rietals on the banks of the Fraser River.
The next morning, I visited Horsting’s
Farm Market and Cafe for a coffee and a
giant cinnamon bun before heading on to
the McAbee Fossil Beds, where you can hike
and see fish, bird, spider, crayfish and plant
fossils deposited in a lake during the Eocene
Epoch some 53 million years ago.
Then it was on to the Historic Hat Creek
Ranch, which tells the story of the indigenous
Shuswap people, who inhabited the land for
thousands of years before Europeans ar‐
rived. The ranch also has several well-pre‐ popular Riverside Park on the Thompson
served buildings, including a roadhouse, River, which has its watershed in the Canadian
blacksmith shop and horse-drawn wagons. Rockies to the east. Dinner was at the Noble
After that bit of history, I stopped at the Pig Brewhouse (noblepig.ca), a lively neigh‐
Black Iron Club and Grill at the Tobiano Golf borhood spot with a from-scratch menu.
Course for lunch, followed by a pontoon boat I saved the best for my final full day in
tour of Kamloops Lake. B.C.: Kamloopa Pow Wow.
For the last two nights of my BC road My morning began with a fruity breakfast
trip, I stayed at the Sandman Hotel in down‐ at the Cardo Resto Bar and then a tour of
town Kamloops. The lodging was next to the the BC Wildlife Park , where I saw grizzly

134 WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE WINTER 2025