June 8, 2008

June 8, 2008

Today was supposed to be sunny and warm, but was partially cloudy and cool. Twice in the last week we had postponed a picnic to Manning Provincial Park because of poor weather, so this morning Joanne prepared a picnic lunch and off we went. Manning Provincial Park is about 100 miles west of here on Highway 3 towards Vancouver. We stopped and explored each of the campgrounds and picnic areas within the park. We saw a few deer and a wolf. There's still a lot of snow up in the higher elevations of the park. That explains why the Similkameen River is still so high. The headwaters of the Similkameen are up in the mountains in Manning Park. From the summit in the park, the snow melt and creeks run down the east side to form the Similkameen River which flows east, and down the west side to form the Skagit River which flows west. In Manning Park the Similkameen River is small, almost like a creek. The further east we drove on the way home, the wider and deeper it became. At Princeton, where the Tulameen River flows into the Similkameen it began to look as it does here at Riverside RV Park Resort.

When we got back home we chatted with our next door neighbour, Stu. When we told him about Bo's deer leg incident, he explained how and why there were deer parts in the forest. Last winter a deer tried to jump over the chain link fence surrounding our park. It didn't make it, and got hung up on top of the fence where it died. One of the residents of the park hauled the carcass off the fence with his truck, then hauled it out into the forest where it provided winter feed for the coyotes. Guess there wasn't enough meat on the deer's front legs for the coyotes. Bo was happy with it, though !

DSK