Week ending Apr 30, 2015 Sicamouos to Quesnel

On Friday, although cool and partly cloudy, Janet, Tricia, Joan and John went to play a round of golf at Birchdale golf course. After golf Janet and Trisca treated us to nice lunch at Riverside Bar and Grill. A friend of Janet's and Tricia's arrived for dinner as well as to spend the night. Of course we stayed up late playing cards.

We got up early Saturday morning so Joan could make breakfast for Triscia as Janet and Triscia were off by 7:00 to a Fire Dept course. After breakfast we drove into Vernon to get some RV bits at an RV shop.  We also did laundry and some clean up in preparation for our Sunday departure. Janet and Triscia got back from their course about 4:30 so we bowled and played golf on the Wii. In the evening John and Lorraine came up for a visit and coffee prior to our leaving the next day.

Sunday after Janet and Triscia left for the second day of their course, we left about 9:00 A.M. Our destination was Hat Creek Ranch near Cache Creek. We stopped near Kamloops for a coffee break, and found a backroads map for northern BC.  We arrived at Hat Creek Ranch just after 1:00. The ranch is a historic site and is actually closed, except for the RV park.  There are 8 sites, electricity only. We were alone in the park, so noise and campfires are not a problem. Since we hadn't set up the satellite dish while we were at Janet's we were quite surprised that John found the signal almost before Joan had the TV's set up in the trailer. 

After set up we went for a walk through the park, talked to the goats and then to the Stuctwesemc (band of the Shushwap Nation) Interpretive Site adjacent to the park.

sweat lodge

We discovered that we had left our camera at Janet's so took a few pictures with our phone.  Fortunately, Triscia was going right by here on her way to Lillooet on Tuesday, so would be able to drop off the camera without going out of her way.

Monday after a trip to Cache Creek for some milk we took a scenic drive to Marble Canyon Provincial Park. We were looking for some hiking trails, but it is a campground between a couple of fishing lakes.  We stopped and looked at Pavilion Lake, a very interesting area, with beautiful green water.  It was added to Marble Canyon Provincial Park to protect fragile microbialite communities on the bottom of the lake.  These structures are being studied by a joint effort between UBC and NASA, as these primitive life forms could be similar to possible life on early Mars. 

Pavilion Lake

We got back to the trailer so that John could fix the ladder with the parts we got in Vernon while Joan baked bread.

Tuesday morning Trisca arrived 8:00 ish on her way to work at Lillooet. She kindly delivered our camera and a few other bits and pieces we forgot at her house when we left on Sunday. After a quick cup of hot chocolate and a short visit she went on her way, and we finished packing up for departure. Thank you Triscia for saving us 6 hours on the road!  We headed for the Airport Inn RV park in Quesnel.  On the way, we stopped in Williams Lake for lunch at the Laughing Loon Pub. Food was okay.  Joan's serving was so large that she brought enough  home for a rerun for dinner Tuesday night. We arrived at the RV park just after 2:00 and by 4:00 we were all set up for the week. We had a telephone visit with our daughter before she and Dominique left for a 10 day vacation in New York City.

Wednesday morning after a visit to the bank, visitor information and the grocery store we had a quick lunch back at the trailer. We then went back downtown to Ceal Tingley Park at the confluence of the Quesnel and Fraser Rivers.  We then did the 5.2 km  Riverwalk which took us along the banks of the Quesnel River then a few blocks across Quesnel to the Fraser river where we got back to the park to pick up out truck. It was a really pleasant walk with many information signs explaining the history of this area ranging from the natives first using to confluence, the Aboriginal people who inhabited the north-central area of British Columbia called themselves 'Uda ukelh' which means "People who travel by boat on water early in the morning." They are more commonly known as the Carriers. Simon Fraser and his voyageurs explored what is now known as the Fraser River in search of a navigable route to the Pacific Ocean, on behalf of the North West Company, a fur trading enterprise based in Montreal. The upper reaches of the river were known from Mackenzie's travels and it was mistakenly thought that these were the headwaters of the Columbia River.  Fraser also explored this river and named the first major tributary that they discovered along the river for Jules Maurice Quesnel, his clerk. The community that eventually grew up at the fork of the Quesnel and Fraser Rivers also came to be called Quesnel. The discovery of gold on the Fraser River in the spring of 1857 initiated a Gold Rush with prospectors flooding up the river, staking claims. By 1859 they had reached the Quesnel River. Major strikes on Williams Creek in 1861 triggered the Cariboo Gold Rush and the growth of Barkerville. At its peak this boom town was said to have been the most populous city west of Chicago and north of San Francisco.   One of the final spots on the walk was a memorial to the trip McKenzie took down the Fraser to reach the Pacific Ocean.

Quesnel River flowing into Fraser River

Thursday morning we went on a scenic drive to Barkerville, even though the site isn't open until May 14.  There are numerous historic sites along the drive, all relating to the area's gold rush.  Our first stop was for a short walk at Cottonwood House historic site, which wasn't open yet.

We stopped at the Troll Ski Resort, seemed like an interesting name.

We saw our first black bear of the season. He was a very healthy bear with a shiny black coat. 

After a drive through Wells, one of the more colorful towns we have been to lately,

we got to Barkerville. It was cold and the streets were muddy. The sidewalks in Barkerville are still snow covered, the site doesn't open until May 14th, so we had to walk down the middle of the street.

On our way back to Quesnel, we stopped at Jack-of-Spades Lake rest area to eat our lunch.  Our drive today violated a big rule we have about no snow, as we were above the snow line, driving in sleet and snow, so we were close enough to snow to touch it. 

We were happy to see several deer along the side of the road, although we could not get really good pictures.

Week ending Apr 23, 2015 Sicamous with a weekend in Calgary area

Friday dawned sunny and reasonably warm. A typical day in the Sicamous area. Mid morning we went to John and Lorraine's for coffee. We had a great morning catching up with each other's adventures since we had seen them last. They spent this past winter in Mexico, doing some volunteer work and enjoying the warm weather. They do understand our desire to spend the winter in warmer climates. As we were leaving their feral cat that we had fed the fall we house sat came out to met us. It still is no friendlier than a coupe of years ago.

Saturday morning we left Sicamous (leaving the trailer behind) for Canmore. The drive across the pass was really special. The sky was bright blue, the mountains looked spectacular with the white snow against the blue sky.

 

 

The roads are like summer driving. We were amazed at the lack of traffic on the highway. We stopped for lunch in Golden, eating at the Fire Pit BBQ Smokehouse. By early afternoon we arrived at Elizabeth's in Canmore,  our fine accommodation for the night.  Since we had been sitting in the truck most of the day we decided a walk was in order. Off we went, our first point of interest along the way was the Foothills Hospital home lottery's Canmore townhouse. Of course we had to buy a ticket. We then carried on along some of the streets in downtown Canmore and encountered Bud and Gina, who used to run a B & B just down the block from us on Birchwood Place. After a short visit with them we headed back to Elizabeth's for happy hour. Thanks to Elizabeth for a great dinner, a nice bed and Sunday morning breakfast.

Sunday we departed Elizabeth's early in order to arrive in Bowden to have lunch and a visit with John's parents. By 2:00 ish we left heading for High River, where we met Trev, Sue and the three boys to have dinner at the Golden National. After a nice visit and delicious dinner we headed to a hotel in Cochrane for the night.

Monday morning after a breakfast thanks to the hotel we stopped at the UPS store to pick up our mail, then on to Walmart and Safeway to do some grocery shopping.  Our next stop was downtown Calgary for a visit as well as business meeting with our financial people. After lots of laughs and some business we are now ready to prepare our income tax. So again we hit the road, back to  Sicamous. Before we left Calgary we stopped at Sobey's liquor store for a case of wine.  One of our favorite wines was on sale for a great price, and we also get a further reduction buying by the case. We also stopped in Canmore to pick up some sausages from Valbella Meats.  After driving through the mountain parks, past Revelstoke, we stopped at Kay Falls, one of our favourite spots on the route.  We arrived at Janet's about 7:00 ish in time to have a nice visit before calling our travel weekend over.

Yamnuska

Mt. Bourgeau

Kay Falls

Tuesday morning, we asked Janet where we could get the bearings on the trailer checked and repacked.   She phoned John, mentioned above, who came over in the afternoon.  In the process of greasing the bearings, he discovered that the hydraulic brake line had broken.  This is the third time since we've had the trailer.  Fortunately, he had the tools necessary to fix the line, and get it tied up so it doesn't bounce as much while we travel, so hopefully this won't happen again.   It is very nice to have someone we trust help us with this maintenance, while showing us how we can do this ourselves in the future.  When it's done in a shop, their insurance requires us to stay out of the shop.

Wednesday John greased the last axle, as we had run out of time with the brake line repair, so the trailer is now ready for its next year of travel.  After lunch Janet, John and Joan went golfing at Birchdale.

Janet

This is a small family par 3 golf course, the perfect type for us. We took Janet out for dinner at Grandmas and Grandpas restaurant in Sicamous. On the way back to the house we stopped at a historic site that honours the Ukranian Canadians at the site of an internment camp from WW I.

Thursday was a work day.  We paid some of our pad rent by helping Janet put the new cover on her truck shed.

We chatted with Janet and Tricia about their Greek vacation plans. Joan had a telephone visit with Bea and Lester from our B & B days in Canmore. They are experts on Greek vacations, so were a wealth of information, helping Janet and Tricia plan their upcoming trip.

Week ending Apr 16, 2015 Oliver, Sicamous

Saturday we went to Osoyoos, and climbed highway 3 above the lake to  Baergnaescht B&B to visit with the owners Silvia and Fritz. They were fellow B & B owners from our Canmore days. We retired from the B & B they moved to Osoyoos and built a huge new home with excellent B&B suites.  

View from Baergnaescht

Baergnaescht

After touring their home we treated them to lunch at Papa's Firehall Bistro in Oliver. It is a new brewery, tasty beer, good food, established by some young fellows who when they graduated from university in the early 2000's couldn't find a job. Their experience of beer making, because they were too young to buy beer when they were students, has been put to good use and they seem to have a successful business.

We spent Saturday evening watching the Nascar race from Texas.

Sunday we hiked the Golden Mile Trail. The trail starts at Tinhorn Creek Winery and  goes into the Mount Kobau Range.  The winery has a couple of fences above it.  The first one is fine mesh fence that is used to keep the snakes out of the vineyard.  The second fence is electrified to keep deer and bear out of the vineyard.  The main point of interest along the hike was Tinhorn Creek stamp mill ruins, the only remaining evidence of gold mining in the mountains above Tinhorn Creek winery. We walked further on and eventually found a nice log to sit on and have lunch where we had great views of the valley.

Monday was cool and cloudy, so rather than go for a hike we did laundry and housework.

Tuesday we planned on hiking, but it was a rainy day in the valley and fresh snow on the top of the hills, so, as we are fair weather hikers, we just hung around the trailer, taking care of a few chores and packed away a few things in preparation for our move tomorrow.

Wednesday was moving day, our destination was Swansea Point, 10 Km south of Sicamous.  On our way, we started looking for a spot to have lunch in Kelowna, but didn't see any spots, in time to pull in, to park the trailer.   We did find plenty of  parking space in Vernon at the Village Green Mall, and were extremely fortunate to find Browns Social House in the mall, where we had a very nice lunch before carrying on to visit with our friends Janet and Tricia.  However, they had to go to Vancouver in the morning (we expected that), but we will remain here to make a run into Calgary (without the trailer)  to take care of some business on Monday. We will visit with them when early next week.   

On Thursday, we thought we would walk down to Mara Lake, but couldn't find an easy way to cross the highway, as the highway is being widened between us and the lake, so we chatted with a fellow living at the intersection before returning to the house.

Week ending Apr 9, 2015 Oliver

Good Friday was a fairly lazy day. John finished putting the insulation under the trailer Joan did a bit a housework. Yesterday Joan had roasted a 1/2 turkey, so today was leftover day. Nothing is better than leftover turkey. Just to keep you updated on our mail delivery - no mail yet, according to the tracking system, since our package didn't arrive by end of day yesterday, as promised, they do not have any idea when it will arrive. We are here until the 15th, we are hopeful it will arrive before we leave; after all it was only supposed to take 1 day. Men's curling finals have started, so our weekend entertainment is organized.

After watching curling Saturday morning we went for a walk in the neighbourhood. The apple and cherry trees are starting to bloom. Very pretty.

 There are ponderosa pines in the area, one of our favourites. When we got back to the trailer, we contacted our UPS store in Cochrane today. He can not find out anything more than we know - our package is not here yet. But he assures us it will arrive - no one seems to know when. Monday we are hoping the main tracking office will be open and we will be able to find out a more definitive delivery date.

Sunday was world curling finals.  Between games  we took the opportunity to do a walk along the Okanagon River. We discovered a wetland that was dedicated to the protection of the great basin spadefoot, which is like a frog or toad, but a bit different,  and the western painted turtle. Generally these amphibians are seen in the evening, and as we were there in the middle of the day we did not see any of them. We did see lots of red winged blackbirds.

Blackbird

Monday around noon our mail arrived, only 6 days after the promised arrival time, but at least it is here.  While John worked on replacing insulation under the trailer Joan waded through a load of mail. Since this is the year we both turn 65 the gov't wants all sort of forms filled out. The one that amused us the most was the one that said because you are 65 please fill in this form to obtain your Alberta seniors benefits. One of the first items they require is a copy of my birth certificate. I guess they needed to prove their records were correct? Other forms really were just repeats of info we had sent them in our previous correspondence within the past year. Tempting to say "see our last application" But that would be expecting too much. It is no wonder the gov't spends so much money on administrative duties. We were thankful that the library was not too far away, so we were able to get the required photocopies.

Tuesday and Wednesday was spent filling out forms. Only one more left to do now and that is for the US gov't declaring that we are not a resident of the US and therefore not required to pay tax on our income to them. I am beginning to think that the gov'ts all have shares in pen manufacturers.

Thursday was a beautiful day with bright blue sky, we chose to do a hike to the top of Oliver Mountain.  We are happy to be done with forms and back out hiking and enjoying some exercise.  It was a very steep hike. We struggled our way up until we found a nice spot and had lunch sitting on a rock looking over the Oliver valley. Coming down off the mountain was easier on the lungs, but harder on the knees.

Oliver and Tuc El Nuit Lake from Oliver Mountain

Week ending Apr 2, 2015 Richland Wa to Oliver BC

Friday after a visit with John's parents we headed to the Reach Museum in Richland, which has a section on the Hanford Nuclear Reactor.  The Hanford Reactor produced the plutonium that was used in the nuclear bomb that the USA detonated over Nagasaki, Japan to end World War II in the Pacific.  The museum had excellent descriptions of the technology used, the project to build the reactors, and the community that was built to man the project.    See the Wikepedia description of Hanford for more details.  There are a couple of other sections in the museum regarding the Columbia River in this area, but there were several classes of school children in them, so we chose to skip those sections.

Columbia River from Reach Museum

Saturday we packed up, with our destination being Oliver B.C.  We had a wonderful drive along Coulee Scenic Drive. We drove along Scooteney Reservoir, Moses and Lenore Lakes. When we first left Richland the wind was vicious,  finally died down once we got to the protection of the canyon walls along Grand Coulee. 

Lake in Grand Coulee

We did a final stop for cheap diesel at Omak and had a quick lunch in the truck.  Our stop at the border crossing was quick and uneventful. The border agents here are very accommodating for us snowbird types.  We suspect they see at lot of them returning home at this time of year.  We arrived at Desert Lake RV Resort around 2:00 P.M.  This is a small park, not the most spacious we've been in, situated on Tuc-El-Nuit Lake, reasonably close to downtown Oliver. We got everything set up in time to watch the first game of the men's world curling championship.

Sunday was more curling, Nascar racing and a walk in the park, to the beach.

Tuc El Nuit Lake

Monday we made a trip to Penticton to do some shopping, John wanted to have a chat with the pharmacist about whether some high temps in the trailer would affect pills, and we had to go to Tim's to participate in the roll up the rim. No luck, but then we didn't really expect to have any. Mid afternoon we got back to the trailer, in time to catch an RV tech working on a trailer in the park. We had a chat with him, he will come back tomorrow to resolve the problem we have had for the past few months with a stiff sewer valve. We sent a letter off to Medipac to get a refund on our insurance since we are back in Canada 2 weeks ahead of schedule. We also arranged to have our mail from the winter couriered from our UPS box in Cochrane to our site here. That should make reading (not necessarily interesting) for a day or 2.  Men's curling is back on this evening.

Tuesday the RV tech came by with the valve we needed to replace. After a bit more than an hour the required repairs were complete. 

Wednesday we are still waiting for our mail; one day delivery seems to be taking a very long day.  According to the tracking  site, our package should arrive by 7:00 P.M. tomorrow night.  We had to make a trip in to Kelowna to visit the Kodoo store. Our phone has been acting up the past few days, so its time to replace it. Koodo provided us with a new phone, paid from our tab, so no cost to us. They tried to transfer the contacts, and the few pictures we had on the old phone to the new one, but the old phone wouldn't co-operate.   We spent the evening adding back in our contact info, and sending the pictures from the phone to our computer using Bluetooth.  Now all we have to do is figure out how to use the new phone.

Thursday we needed to hang around the trailer waiting for our mail to arrive.  In the meantime we put the cover back over the holding tanks, adding some of the metallic bubble-wrap insulation to the existing fiber-glass.    Mail still hasn't arrived by the time we posted the blog, but they do have until 7:00 pm to meet the most recent expectation we found on the UPS tracking web-site.