BCAA Travel Blog

The first thing that hits your eye when you drive up the winding road to the Spirit Ridge Vineyard Resort & Spa is a large metal sculpture of a Native chieftain sitting astride a horse. His arms are lifted skyward and resting on his open palms is a peace pipe. The warrior looks right at home amid the surrounding Okanagan grasslands of sage and antelope brush. The sculpture is the work of Virgil “Smoker” Marchand, a member of the Colville Eastside Reservation in Omak, Washington. It is one of several of Marchand’s pieces that decorate the grounds of the elegant Santa Fe-style resort, all of them commissioned by Chief Clarence Louie of the Osoyoos Indian Band to honour the local native history. The hotel’s striking design and Marchand’s impressive metal sculptures are only two aspects of what ranks as one of B.C.’s most imaginative and surprising tourist developments.

Located just outside Osoyoos, the $75-million complex, which the Okanagan band operates in partnership with Bellstar Hotels and Resorts, is the South Okanagan’s only 4.5 star resort. It is comprised of 94 villas and suites, a restaurant, spa, pool and hot tub and meeting spaces. Standing next to the hotel is Nk’Mip (Inka-meep) Cellars, North America’s first aboriginal-owned-and-operated winery. Attracting up to 500 visitors a day during the summer months, the winery, which opened in 2003, now produces nine types of wine. In only five years of operations, it has received several awards and accolades and it produces only wines with the Vintners Quality Alliance seal. Nearby is the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre, an architectural marvel sensitively constructed into a hillside with outdoor and indoor galleries highlighting the culture, art and history of the aboriginal people of the Okanagan. Interactive stations and hands-on displays allow guests to witness live feedings of nesting bats, take a peek into a “rattlesnake hotel,” view a multimedia presentation in the Pithouse Theatre or stroll self-guided trails through the Great Basin Desert. And just east of the Desert Centre, nestled at the base of a sage-covered mountain, sits the nine-hole Sonora Dunes golf course.

Remarkably, this is only the first phase of the project. Phase 2, slated to be completed by the fall of 2009, will include 132 more condominium suites, a bistro-deli, outdoor pools, conference facilities and a fitness centre. The layout and the size of the development have made a powerful impression on the members of our media group, most of whom have not viewed the site before. Our numbers include Shi Long Yang, a senior journalist for China’s Xinhua News Agency, his wife Zoe Zhao, a reporter for Xinhua, and their daughter Amy; photo journalist Dannielle Hayes; travel writer Alison Gardner; Racelle Kooy, director of marketing for the Aboriginal Tourism Association of B.C. (ATBC); Nora Weber, travel media specialist with TerraCom Group Communications; and our driver and Tourism B.C. board member, Leonard Laboucan.

We have come to Spirit Ridge on the first leg of an aboriginal culture trip through central B.C. We drove here from Vancouver, stopping along the way to view the Mascot Mine, near the tiny town of Hedley. The gold mine, which operated between 1936 and 1949, was one of the most unusual operations of its kind in the world, being built entirely on the side of a mountain, 850 vertical metres above the town. In the 1990s, the British Columbia government was going to burn the site down because it posed a safety risk, but Bill Barlee, who was British Columbia’s Minister of Tourism at the time, saw the potential tourism opportunity in developing Mascot into a large outdoor mining museum. He convinced the provincial government to purchase the site, and in 1995 steps were taken to preserve the site as a Provincial Heritage resource. The buildings were stabilized and rehabilitated over an eight-year period, and in 2004, the site was open for tours. Today, the Upper Similkameen Indian Band has developed the former mine into a first-class tourist attraction. Buses take visitors up a dirt road with 43 switchbacks to the site where they then descend down more than 500 steep, wooden steps and tour through the precariously perched buildings that made up the original mine.

The Mascot Mine is unique, but it pales in comparison with the ambitious scope of the Spirit Ridge development. Tomorrow we will tour the grounds and meet Chief Clarence Louie, the man whose vision and determination spearheaded the project. But tonight is reserved for relaxing. We enjoy a spectacular meal at the resort’s classy Passatempo restaurant and several glasses of Nk’Mip’s award-winning varietals. During dinner, I take note of eight-year-old Amy’s snazzy do. I ask her where she gets her hair cut. “At the Chinese embassy in Ottawa,” she says.

It strikes me that “I used to get my haircut at the Chinese embassy in Ottawa” would make a pretty good first line for a short story. But I have no time or energy to write it tonight. Sleep beckons.

(To be continued …)

Photo Credits:

#1: Kerry Banks

#2: SpiritRidge.ca

#3: Shaw.ca

Filed under: Writing from the road