Once in awhile-now and again-this is us

one trip we went to a lot of cemeteries. this is our first one this trip. it was small and there were recent headstones, so it’s still being used.  cemeteries can evoke a lot of emotion. is that there purpose? I don’t want to be buried, and i’m not sure why people do. is religion a big part of wanting to be buried in the ground? no one has to answer that.  just thinking out loud. we all have different beliefs. right or wrong, good or bad.

I want to put in a few more pictures from town. on our way out we stopped and watched the blacksmith working. he was a younger man and we started talking to him. he had a sense of humor and we were enjoying the conversation and got interested in what he was making. he was telling us all about his grandfather and father being blacksmiths and learning from them.

he has been at barkerville 10 years. you could tell he knew what he was doing. he would put the metal in, keep checking the color,  put it back in, bring it out, pound on it, put it back in. then he took it over to the vice and twisted it. he put it back in, took it out, put water on it, twisted it, put it back in, pounded on it some more. so on and so on.

I guess it doesn’t take much for me to have fun, because this was so much fun. watching and talking all about blacksmithing.  who knew.  he told us all about the pine beetle that is killing the lodge pole pines up here. we’ve seen the dead tress the whole trip, but the road out here, the hills were covered with dead trees. nothing has been found to stop them.

we stood and watched him for a long time, and I decided I had to have the item he was making. it was so amazing to see it made. from start to finish. he cleaned it up and it was mine. I will cherish it forever.

we’re going to stop in whistler before we reach Vancouver. it’s 240 miles from Williams lake where we are now. so I don’t know if we’ll get there today or not. we might see another blacksmith along the way. ha ha.

so stay tuned.

and don’t forget to leave a comment

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it was a 50 mile drive out to barkerville, an old restored gold rush town. kind of like calico. a little like knotts berry farm too.

are we there yet. watch out for the moose.

it was getting late when we got there so we found a camp right outside the town. we could get a early start the next morning.

it was so beautiful, but we couldn’t get out because of the mosquitos.

it was nearly deserted when we got to the town at 9:00am.

there were a few places to get breakfast. we chose ‘wake up jakes’, and had a nice meal. I still remember trying to wake up jake. huh jake?

we explored the town, looking in all the buildings. it was done well and very interesting.

ouch!

are you guys twins?

hey, could I have a bottle of aspirin? hey.

next

more people came as the day went on. we took a break and went back to the coach to have lunch. when we went back into town we got our pictures taken at one of those dress you up places. (I can’t show you because it might be our Christmas card). while we waited for them to be done, we relaxed across the street.

now that’s a pint of beer

we never got around to panning for gold. I thought since it was a real gold rush town, it would be an authentic set up. but it was basically for kids.

it was a fun day. when we first walked in that morning, we said oh no. we drove 50 miles for this. but everyone was so friendly, it never got really crowded and it was enjoyable. we had fun. but it was too late to ride horses now. we can do that anytime.

there was a neat cemetery outside town. right by the campground in fact.  i’ll show a few pictures of that next.

so stay tuned

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before we left prince George we stopped at the railroad museum. I don’t how many of you are interested in old trains, but we are and it’s my blog, so i’m going to post some pictures. no, just kidding, trains are an integral part of our history. which I like to include is small doses to the blog. this museum had a large section of how the first nation was talked out of the right to their land, here in prince George,  and then swindled out the money promised. it was all articles and old documents that didn’t photograph well though. it was an interesting story how long it took and the shady practices developers had in dealing with the first nation. shameful.

this was our favorite train. it’s like the one we took to new York.

i remember sitting in chairs like these all across the country

and eating in the dining room

but not from these rather extensive menus.

a snow pusher

this one is going to need a lot of work

it was so much fun walking amongst these giants.  relics or artifacts?  but definitely worth preserving.

we drive to barkerville to pan for gold or ride horses. so stay tuned.

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I want to correct a faux paux on my part. I was calling the nice people on the indian reservation, Indians. I have found out since then, they are called ‘first nation” now. I had seen first nation in print, but didn’t connect it with what they called themselves.

we drove by the neighborhood where they live. no one was out so I took a few pictures this time. just to give you an idea how the first nation people have to, or choose to, live.

so they live in this beautiful country, that was once theirs, and live like this?  frank and linda, you traveled the reservations, what do you think? where’s that comment you said you were going to leave, huh? now’s a good time. huh? i’m surprised you didn’t leave a comment to correct me.

a smokehouse by the river

to leave you on a good thought, I just took this picture out our back window. I love these trees. they are everywhere up here. they line the roads along with all the pine trees.  I think they are alder. I bet they’re pretty in the fall.

frank and linda are going to leave a comment

so stay tuned

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there is a lot of beauty on highway 16, the trans Canada highway. the traffic is so minimal, I  wanted  jerry to stop in the middle of the highway to take pictures. of course he wouldn’t.  i’m glad we went this way instead of taking the ferry again.  we took our time and stopped where we could to take pictures.  I know most of you, if not all, will never be on this highway, so i’ll share some pictures.

we stopped for the night in hixon, south of prince George. today we have a choice of going to an old gold mining town or horse back riding. it’s a gorgeous day and since we are in not in any hurry maybe we’ll do both!

our route for today

hope you do something special on your 70th birthday too celia. and remember, for a month you’re 3 years older than me. ha ha.

I made 39 points

“happy birthday”

we might ride horses or pan for gold, or maybe both.

so stay tuned

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this is where they catch and release the salmon for studying. it tells them a lot of important information. across the river is where we had lunch. here’s a small bit of info.

the salmon aren’t too hard to catch. they are constantly jumping out of the water

the other side of the river where the Indians can use nets

we have had some of the best campgrounds. here’s a few views from our walk around it.

jerry always finds a dog

we leave this beautiful place and head towards Vancouver today.

so stay tuned

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the campground we are staying at is in on an indian reservation in moricetown, british Columbia. the office was closed when we arrived so we found a spot and would pay in the morning.  jerry walked around and found someone that knew the password for the wifi. the woman he talked to was indian and had a pickup truck full of fruit she was offering it to everyone. she insisted jerry take some. so he did.

jerry went to visit their camp again later and that’s when he was invited to go fishing. by one of the younger men. he didn’t know they would leave at five in the morning though, so he missed it. they were fishing on indian land so he thought he couldn’t anyway. he found out later if you are invited by a member then it’s ok.   he missed this big fish.

the one that got away

we paid in the morning, and they invited us to a celebration that was going on that day. a celebration of the returning of the salmon. only a mile from camp. how lucky are we?

it was a wonderful experience. the food was a feast and was all delicious. everyone was friendly. the chiefs of three tribes came in full dress and made speeches.  it took place along the river that the salmon return to every year. this celebration has been going on for five years to get the younger people involved in some of the traditions of the past.

volunteers serve the elders first

our camp was just across the river. we explored a little and watched them catch and release the salmon. so………….

stay tuned for the next post

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the ferry ride was so enjoyable. we slept good in our little cabin. we had one and a half nights this time. the last night we had to get up at 3:00am to get off the ship though.

I wanted to show you a few more pictures I took.

we saw this pile of wood floating on the water close to shore. as we were looking we noticed this little boat pushing the logs they bring from the land into place. way out here in the middle of nowhere, and people are doing their jobs.

the houses are few and far between the small towns. this house was all by itself with all these chairs out on the shore.

in one of my other ferry posts, I put a picture in of the barge taking a house down the water. I guess they take them to people’s property and place them. we saw a lot of them put along the waters edge. the deckhand told us most of these are summer homes. and the people that do live here all the time are pretty rugged.

the small boats get very close to the ferry. I guess it’s like a freeway to them.

the water is a pretty color that just wouldn’t come through in the pictures. we saw a lot of the color change like this when the passage was narrow.

another glacier off in the distance.

jerry’s getting pretty rugged looking himself, don’t ya know.

pretty good beard ‘eh

jerry’s out finding out about the fishing. I hope he catches one. a big one.

so stay tuned

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it turned out to be a gorgeous day. after doing laundry we took a drive on the ‘end of the road’, road. it actually ends and that’s as far as you go. we didn’t go all the way, but it was beautiful as far as we went. there are no roads into Juneau. you have to come by water or air.

when it got close to 4:00 pm, we headed to the ferry terminal. didn’t want to be late.

there’s our ferry

here we go again, wait this is different

STOP!!!!!!

we gathered all our stuff and went up to find our cabin. we didn’t get a window this time.  you don’t spend much time in there, so we found it didn’t really matter.

here we are, 22c

nice

the schedule

we met some nice people

the food was good.

the ferries use a different route that the cruise ships

we saw some summer home property we might buy. it even comes with a boat

we saw so many things pass by it was a true adventure. it’s a whole other life these people lead up here. the crew seems very happy with their schedule of 6 days on 6 days off. one of the deckhands talked to us for a long time.

we got in prince Rupert at 3:00am and went straight to the Walmart again. we bought some groceries and started our drive into Canada. we found a great campground and might stay a couple of days here. jerry’s been invited to go salmon fishing.

so stay tuned

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jerry got us up at 4:00am to get ready and get to the ferry on time. I was up late last night trying to get the posts in the blog. I probably made more errors than usual, aside from not capitalizing. anyone new to the blog has found out by now I do this as quickly as possible, with as little fuss as I can. I don’t want it to take too much time away from the trip. I take pictures because I like to. if I get a good one I put it in. if I didn’t I don’t. and I write some text , at least I try to spell correctly. I was always a good speller. not as good in sentence structure or punctuation. so rather take time to think should I put a comma here or there, even though I know it can change the whole meaning of a sentence. I think you get the jist of what i’m trying to say. it is what it is. I am what I am. you are who you are.

now that I said all that even though I didn’t intend too, the jist of this post is……..jerry read the ticket wrong and we didn’t have to be there until 4:00pm. they got a good laugh at the terminal. a lot of you are probably laughing too aren’t you? I know you are ray. admit it. tracy?  tony?

now I have another story I’ve been wanting to put in. I read this article in one of the little small town papers we picked up. those papers are good to find out information about what’s going on in town. kind of like the throw away papers we all get on our lawns. the article was very interesting and thought all you dog lovers would like it.

it’s about this dog we saw at one of our stops. it was a boat launch out in the middle of nowhere. a guy came with his dog and started to throw a ball into the water. the dog was very excited and first and then started to get distracted. he would drop the ball and start smelling the water. he did this several times. finally running to get the ball and then not even picking it up. it found one spot in shallow water  and then just humped up and went poop. we started laughing, and said “well you wont have to pick that one up”. we all know how dogs have to find the right spot, I guess even in water.

here’s the article. I hope you can read it.

maybe this one is better.

anyway we have another day here. jerry is going to be putty in my hands. I think we’ll go shopping.

stay tuned.

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