Ralph, all dressed up and ready for work.You may think that I am making excuses, being lazy or maybe even starting to enjoy this new found way of life too much but really this is one thing I have learned in the last 3 weeks...it is not always easy to get to an Internet when you are on the road camping! Especially if you are heading in the northerly direction.
After leaving Westbank we made a mere 3 hour drive to Sorento to visit with Kens brother Ron and family Rosanne and Mercedes. Ken and Ron did a little fishing at White Lake and didn't disappoint us when they arrived home with 2 nice trout, a good start to a summer of fish stories.
After a few days it was time to move on and travel north to Kamloops (another big day) to visit friends Len and Heather, and Chris and Kim-just in case you didn't know Ken lived in Kamloops years ago, b.h. and actually has a few friends still living there. Len and Heather showed us their hospitality and Chris showed us his cool E.M.T. truck (he is a fireman). Things are never dull in Kamloops, and I guess you could include the Canucks game in that too, but we don't want to talk about that!
From Kamloops it was off to Little Big Bar Lake where we had camped with Ken's mom and dad a few years ago when I caught the "big one"! This year however, we are sure that the fish had been frozen out because we didn't even see a small sign of a fish, not even a ripple. Not to be disheartened though we donned our riding gear and did a few great rides around the Caribou including the Gang Ranch. We found an area that had been hit by a wild fire last year and picked enough morels that we ate nothing but for 4 days, morel soup. steak with morel sauce, morel omeletes, and finished then off with morel with pork chops, add to that wild onions and we are living off the land as Ken would say. The scenery on the ride didn't disappoint us either and the weather hung on until we were ready to pull up camp and head on.
Our next destination in the Caribou was Likely. Friends who we had met in the Baja the last few years had invited us to visit them there, where they spend their summers. What a great spot! 80 acres near the booming metropolis of Likely with a view over a pond and forested mountains that just wouldn't quit. And speaking of not quitting neither would the mosquitoes, ah yes we have arrived in mosquito country, but those with Muskol will prosper! We were not to be put off by the mosquitoes and weather, which had turned rainy and wet. We enjoyed tours of the area including the Likey Pub, Quesnel Forks (which was pumping out gold before Barkerville but now is nothing more that a wee bit of an campground and tourist stop, but we enjoyed it all the same). I have to say that one of the highlights of our stop in Likely was an evening spent in Hydraulic (a suburb of Likely, population???small) listening to "Yukon Slim" Brandon Isaac at a livingroom concert, he sang the Blues that left us all with a tear in our eye. I think we will be hearing about him in the future. The only thing that would have topped off the evening would have been Ken reciting "The Shooting of Dan McGrew". Ken, Carl and Roger fished one day in Bootjack Lake and between the 3 of them slaughtered 24 trout! What a fish fry! The ones left were promptly smoked and we were promptly on our way.
Making our way north, past Quesnel on the way to Prince George, we took the gravel road on the west side of the river and stayed a few nights at Punchaw Lake, we thought the fish were a little muddy so we set our sights on picking more morel mushrooms and seeing a little more of the countryside on 2 wheels, the Caribou really is a great place to explore-duo sport!
Our friend Ralph, who you know if you have been follow our blog in the past, is working for the B.C. Parks and is stationed at Carp Lake which is about 3 hours north of Prince George, so you can never guess where we were off to next. We really do have some fabulous parks in B.C...Carp Lake P.P. is 32 km off the hyway and is quite big, maybe 15 km long, with little islands throughout. Our campsite sat 93 steps (I counted, several times) above the lake with a view down to your dock and the water beyond that we just couldn't get enough of. Fishing was good I guess but we were after the Burbot or the Ling Cod as we know it. Unfortunately, the wind and waves picked up and we didn't take a cod home with us and to top it all off we left a few pounds lighter with the weight, line and bait still sitting somewhere on the bottom of the lake :( But boy we loved the park, we hiked, we mountain biked and out on the boat one afternoon saw a cow moose with 2 little calves. Apparently, the moose swim to the island when they are expecting and have their calves there where they are safe from wolves. Very cool. Ralph was busy with work but he did find time to visit a little and stop in for dinner, all in all it was a great stay.
So here we are today, at Ralph's place in McLennan (just north of Grand Prairie) he is still working in the park but we are here parked in his yard catching up on the Internet, laundry (the first time in 3 week, yikes!) and taking a few bike rides around this area, which in REALLY flat and seeing the sights. Today we took both bikes and rode a 420 km loop which took us threw the fire that burnt Slave Lake earlier this spring, we stopped by an aviary and got totally soaked in a downpour, it was a great day.
That's the thing about this life on the road, you just never know what tomorrow or today is going to bring! But what we do know is that it is time to pick up our pace if we want to be in and out of Inuvik before the end of July.
Ferry across the Peace River at Shaftsberry.
Peter has a good collection on pets including 5 horses, 2 llamas, 4 dogs and a cat!
Peters farm's a collection of a farm house and may interesting out buildings on 160 acres.
Ken and Peter hang out after a great day fishing.
