This morning we prepared for departure and headed off for a couple of weeks of camping and exploring in the BC Interior. We left Riverside RV Park Resort and headed east on Hwy. 3 through Keremeos and Osoyoos and beyond to Grand Forks. In Grand Forks we found our way to the centrally located municipal campground. I napped briefly with Sully then we set off to explore downtown Grand Forks by foot.
As we were wandering around looking for the three or four interesting Russian restaurants Joanne’s earlier research had found … BAM BAM ! Two lovely little songbirds simultaneously smacked into a window of the building we were passing. Aw, shit ! One was dead, with a broken neck. One was stunned and injured, but alive, lying on its back on the sidewalk.
I picked it up and cradled it in my hands for a few minutes hoping it would soon revive. It recovered a little, very slowly, so I placed it down in a safe place, and we walked away, hoping for the best. Good luck, little bird. I hope you didn’t die !
We found the restaurants we were looking for, deciding to return to one for lunch tomorrow. We continued walking around exploring until we were hungry enough to return to the trailer for supper. After supper we walked with Bo around the lovely municipal park on the banks of the fast and overflowing Kettle River.
Tuesday ; Grand Forks to Christina Lake
This morning we walked over to Gyro Park in downtown Grand Forks for the Tuesday morning Farmer’s Market. We bought some vegetables and …
I bought a fresh, home made German Chocolate Cake from an old grandmotherly type woman. And some of her freshly made strawberry & rhubarb jam. And some of her freshly made apple butter. What can I say ?
We crossed the street to the old Court House building which now houses the Visitor Information Centre and some art galleries. We picked up some travel information, viewed some art, and admired the lovely architecture of the old building. We walked over to a local grocery store to buy some advertised specials, then returned to the trailer at the municipal campground. We put away the groceries then headed back downtown for lunch. On the way to the restaurant we had chosen we passed a thrift shop. Or … to be more precise … we did not pass a thrift shop ! We went inside the thrift shop and bought stuff ! Story of my life ! I really shouldn’t complain. The only thing we bought was a really nice hooded nylon rain jacket for me … for three bucks ! I wore it for most of the rest of the day !
Lunch was at The Borscht Bowl. Great borscht. Well … with a name like that, what did you expect ? The borscht was Russian style, not Ukrainian. While eating lunch I asked the proprietor if she had a local phone book. I wanted to see if my “long lost” cousins still lived in Grand Forks. My mother’s older brother moved to Grand Forks when she was just a little child. So perhaps … something like 80 to 85 years ago ? He started a furniture business, then a trucking business. I think my cousins still operate the trucking business. The restaurant woman asked me who in town I was looking for. When I told her the family’s name, my mother’s maiden name, she said the “pretty long haired blonde” who worked in the hairstylist shop two doors down had that family name. So, after lunch, we walked two doors down to the hairstylist shop looking for the “pretty long haired blonde”. WOW … what a beautiful young woman. How could she possibly be a descendant of the same "thick, no neck" gene pool as me ? HA HA HA ! Allison is my cousin’s daughter, making her my “second cousin”, I guess it’s called. She was quite surprised to have an unknown relative walk in and introduce himself. I can’t even recall for sure whether or not I’ve even met her father, my cousin. I think maybe … 40 years ago ?
We left the Grand Forks municipal campground and drove a fairly short distance to Christina Lake. We checked into Christina Pines RV Park … with considerable reluctance on my part. Their rates are higher than posted in the current Passport America directory. They wanted $2.50 extra for each pet. I refused, telling them to waive the additional fee for pets or I would take my money elsewhere. The Wi-Fi is another additional fee. And their rates are … pretty “healthy”, especially for this “shoulder season” time of the year. They bill themselves as “three blocks from the lake”. So as soon as we were set up in our site we went for a walk towards the lake. About six blocks from the campground, with the lake still not in sight, we turned around and headed back because of the ominous looking clouds rolling in.
We made it back to the trailer before the big storm hit. Loud thunder, bright lightening, heavy rain, big hailstones. Both animals were scared. We had to reassure Bo that no, this wasn’t a repeat of Hurricane Ivan and he wasn’t going to end up a lost and homeless stray as a result of this big storm. I lay on the bed, cuddling Sully on my chest and Bo against my hip. After an hour or so of violent storm, things calmed down to a steady light rain for the rest of the day.
Wednesday ; Christina Lake to Castlegar
This morning we thought we would go to the campground’s washroom building to use the showers and perhaps avoid having to empty the trailer’s waste holding tanks ... in the rain ... only to discover that ... < sputter > ... the campground that we were in had pay showers. Forty-eight bucks a night ... extra fee for pets ... extra fee for Wi-Fi ... and extra fee for showers. GOODBYE !
We showered in the trailer, and prepared for departure … in the rain ; you know how much I hate that … and continued heading east on Hwy. 3 to Castlegar. In Castlegar we stopped at Canadian Tire to buy an advertised special, then found our way to the Doukhobor Discovery Centre, a museum and adjacent small restaurant. By the time we arrived it was time for lunch, so after manoeuvering the truck and trailer around in a too small parking lot, we had a wonderful Russian lunch. Borscht again ! And vereneki, the Russian version of perogies. And nalesniki, like blintzes filled with cottage cheese. Fortuitously for me, Joanne's head was turned when I poured the little serving container of melted butter all over my vereniki / perogies. HA HA HA ! No, dear, I don't know why my vereniki / perogies seem greasy < blink blink >. Gee, I haven't had an opportunity to use melted butter as a "condiment" since my days of working on my Aunt Lena's farm as a teenager.
After lunch we walked over to the museum, a series of old Doukhobor farm buildings. They are a re-creation of an early 1900's Doukhobor communal farm. We spent the afternoon wandering around, learning about the Doukhobor culture, religion, and lifestyle. With what I learned today, I admit, with a bit of trepidation, that the Doukhobor religion is the first religion ... in my entire life ... that makes sense to me !
One of the buildings housed an audio-visual centre. We entered it a few moments after a group of three. It was a man about five to ten years older than us showing the museum to a couple who were friends of his. He had brought them in to show them a particular documentary which was just beginning to play. It was a documentary produced by the CBC about ten years ago. It was about the B.C. government's "kidnapping" of Doukhobor children and their "incarceration" in residential schools from 1953 to 1959. Another appalling moment in Canadian history. But ... what made the watching of this documentary so moving and disturbing for us was ... the man who was showing this documentary to his friends was ... a Doukhobor ... and one of the kidnapped, incarcerated children. It was obviously not the first time he had seen this documentary, and yet ... he still could not watch it without crying.
We left the museum at 5 PM, its closing time. We drove a short distance to Pass Creek Regional Park which has a small campground of unserviced sites.
Thursday ; Castlegar to Sandon
This morning we departed Pass Creek Regional Park on the outskirts of Castlegar and headed north on Hwy. 3A then Hwy. 6 to New Denver. We refilled with diesel ( YIKES ... a hundred and forty bucks ! ) then went to check out Centennial Park, the municipal campground. Since the weather was nice today Joanne decided that she would rather explore outdoors at the ghost mining town of Sandon, which was tomorrow's agenda, than explore indoors at the Nikkei Interment Centre in New Denver, which was today's agenda. So ... we left New Denver and drove to Sandon. We will return to New Denver tomorrow.
The short drive from New Denver to Sandon was half on a paved road and half on a dirt road. As we drove along the dirt road portion, there was a bear on the side of the road. We stopped to look at it. It stopped to look at us. We looked at it. It looked at us. And so it went for a few minutes. We eventually decided to move on ... and so did the bear. HA HA HA ! When we arrived at the mining ghost town of Sandon we parked beside the Prospector's Pick, the only business in the town, and we had lunch in the trailer. After lunch we went inside to look around the Prospector's Pick, a sort of combination of museum and small convenience store.
Sandon is a mostly abandoned silver mining town. One of the very few families in town has owned the 1900 City Hall building since 1988 and for the last 23 years ( I guess Rome wasn't built in a day ! ) has been restoring the building and turning it into a museum of sorts. That's the Prospector's Pick. They also operate a trucking business. And have stockpiled a fairly large collection of old trolley buses which they hope to sell to transportation museums for restoration < shrugging >. And an old CPR steam engine which awaits restoration < shrugging again >. And an awful lot of old mining equipment < shrugging again >. And they offer unserviced "camping" on their land beside lovely Carpenter Creek. We decided to stay overnight. Power is available to their "campers" if they have a 100 foot extension cord.
I do !
We explored one of the old trolley buses that is somewhat set up as a museum piece. We wandered around from one end of the tiny town to the other. There was a lot of old and rusted mining equipment. There was a very old but still functional hydro-electric plant. It still operates and provides power to the town.
Back at the trailer I decided it was time for Bo's weekly obedience session. Joanne joined us and we did some obedience work around some old mining equipment, putting him into "sit, stay" then hiding behind pieces of equipment before commanding "come". There was a stockpile of old fifty foot lengths of pipe. I had an idea ! I positioned Bo and myself at one end of a pile of pipes, Joanne at the other end, I gave the "tunnel" agility course command, Joanne called his name at the other end of the pipes, and ... ZOOOOOM ! ! ! HA HA HA HA HA ... through 50 feet of pipe in the blink of an eye. HA HA HA HA HA ... good dog, Bo, well done ! What a fearless little cur ! We sent him back and forth through fifty foot pipes a number of times, us laughing, him wagging all the way. Good dog, Bo !
We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting outside in folding chairs, in the sunlight, beside the small but extremely fast flowing Carpenter Creek, enjoying the natural wilderness beauty of quintessential BC.
Today I am ashamed to be a Canadian !
This morning we departed Sandon and drove back to New Denver. On the way we saw a bear on the side of the road. Maybe the same one as yesterday ? We stopped and watched it eating dandelions on the side of the road. I got out of the truck and took pictures. It seemed unconcerned. A couple of women on bicycles came by. They stopped to chat with me and watch the bear. Still the bear seemed unconcerned. It was preoccupied with stuffing its face after a long winter of hibernation.
At New Denver we wanted to buy some groceries before going to the municipal campground in town. We found the grocery store and I parked nearby. As we walked back to the grocery store we noticed a farmer's market in a little town park. We wandered around the farmer's market ... and spent an amazingly lot of money ! Bought a quart of home made borscht. And a loaf of home made bread. And a jar of a homeopathic / herbal wound salve. I've just about finished a small jar of a similar salve that I bought from a Navajo medicine man at an Apache PowWow in Silver City, New Mexico about five years ago. And we bought a can of Quebec maple syrup being sold by a French Canadian woman for a lower price than we used to pay for maple syrup back when we lived just outside Ottawa surrounded by maple syrup farms. Finally we made it to the grocery store.
We got set up in the municipal campground, had lunch, then walked over to the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre, the only remaining Japanese Canadian internment camp from the Second World War era when the BC government "evacuated" 22,000 Japanese Canadians, most of them actually born in Canada, away from the West Coast to internment camps in the BC Interior. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 all Japanese Canadians were required to surrender all their possessions ... land, homes, vehicles, etc. ... to the BC government and submit to forced "evacuation" to a minimum of 100 miles inland from the coast. They were considered to be, and treated as, "enemy aliens". Another disgusting and shameful period in Canadian history !
After spending the afternoon at the Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre we wandered back towards Centennial Park, the municipal park that includes the campground we were at. It also includes the Kohan Reflection Garden, a Japanese garden along the park's shoreline of Slocan Lake. It was a lovely place of solitude and peace in which to reflect on the past. We returned to the trailer just as it began raining ... again. It rained on and off all day today.
After supper we walked around the park and hiked down to the lake shore beside the nearby marina. The rain had stopped and the setting sun made for a very pleasant evening stroll. Back at Centennial Park we did some
Bo-gility on the bicycle obstacle / agility course. Isn't a bicycle obstacle / agility course an invitation for broken bones for every boy in town ? GAWD ... I've turned into my father !
AHHHHH ... we spent much of today sitting in front of a campfire, beside a lovely little lake.
This morning we departed the municipal campground in New Denver and continued heading north on Hwy. 6. About 10 km. before Nakusp we found the turn off we were looking for, to a remote wilderness campground at Box Lake. It was folly to tow a huge 30 foot fifth wheel trailer down a dirt trail for 2 km., but what's done is done ! A few hundred yards before reaching the wilderness campground we met an outbound / oncoming truck camper on the single lane dirt trail. He had to back up all the way back to the campground.
At Box Lake is a BC Forest Service unserviced campground with a few picnic tables. And just enough room to turn Lanoire and Harvey around. There was one other rig at the campground, a small Class C motorhome far enough away from us that we could neither see nor hear it. Joanne's plan for today was to detach Lanoire from Harvey and drive into Nakusp for a day of exploring. I vetoed that idea. I wasn't feeling very healthy, with a flare up of colitis, and I wanted to spend a day just relaxing by the beautiful lake. It was raining when we arrived, so we had lunch then I went to nap for awhile. When I awoke the rain had stopped, so we went outside and I made a campfire. The fire starters that I recently made from paraffin wax and dryer lint worked excellently ! We spent the rest of the afternoon sitting beside the campfire beside the lake, watching eagles soar overhead, and watching and listening to a loon on the lake. It has been at least ... < thinking > ... 24 years since we've heard the haunting cry of a loon across a quiet lake, and closer to ... < thinking > ... 35 years since we've witnessed a loon's spring time "water walking" mating dance. As the sky cleared and the sun warmed the air the loon cried and preened and bathed and danced on the water.
What a great day !
I felt so ... outdoorsy ... that I decided to test my old campfire cooking skills. Yup ... I still got it ! I think those of us who can still cook an entire meal over an open fire ... especially without a grill / grate ... have become somewhat of a rare breed. I placed two flat rocks in the fire as my cooking surface. I cooked potatoes and onions in foil packets on the fire, then cooked marinated beef ribs on the fire. To top it off ... a can of baked beans heated on the fire ... in the can ! We ate outside at the picnic table beside the campfire beside the lake ... yup ... what a great day !
