…just outside Merritt, BC. After a few rain showers, we took a short hike along the shore of Nicola Lake, following a pretty trail winding through towering ponderosa pines. These are such beautiful trees, so striking with their red trunks and long, long needles. I’ll keep it brief and let the trees and the lake do the talking below!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
We’re currently camping among the trees in the coastal fringe behind Miracle Beach. Isn’t that some name, Miracle Beach? One minor miracle so far? Mostly sunny skies and very little rain! That hasn’t always been the case, as expected late summer/early fall in this little corner of the Pacific Northwest. Earlier, before Miracle Beach:
Miracle Beach is located on a shallow bay, so low tide reveals miles of sand, but when it turns, farewell to the sandy beach, and make a quick retreat to the rocks. You can walk out on a high tide quite some distance with the water only knee high.
The view across the strait is wondrous, miraculous even – coastal mountains stretching each way into the distance, north and south, capped by low clouds.
We saw a heron patiently stalking in the shallows and the hunting was good. We were too far away to spot the prey – perhaps small scuttling crabs along with a few fish? We’d seen both earlier.
We enjoyed watching the tide ebb and flow, the scene one of constant change – ripples and waves on the water and on the sand.
One afternoon the sky was a series of perfect blues, from dark to light, high to low over the distant mountains.
Miracle Beach? We thought so, with all that space, light, blues, greens, ripples and waves!
Thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
It’s September already?! Yikes!
We’ve been out on the coast for the past little while, enjoying the contrast with what we experienced up in the north. Since then, as time has moved on, it is starting to feel distinctly late summery, even early autumnal-ish as night falls sooner and daytime highs drop.
Being on the west coast, we’ve had sunny days, rainy days, misty and foggy days, and sometimes all of those in the same afternoon! The ghostly grey mists and glowing silver seas and skies have been delightful, and after the relative aridity of earlier in the summer, I can almost feel my leathery (yet rugged and really rather handsome) features beginning to rehydrate.
What a transformation, and I now look barely a day over 95… As for that pesky frizzy oceanic hair, let’s just say that ship sailed many seasons ago, so no worries and the cap/toque stays on. (And what hair up top there is does tone really rather well with those aforementioned silvers and greys…)
We’ll be enjoying the west coast for another week or two before beginning our trip back to Alberta, and having to come to terms with the end of road trip and camping season. Although, winter camping is an option? If Mrs. PC could be persuaded… (Nope, no chance – Mrs. PC)
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful long Labour Day weekend!
Lesser? There’s a bigger one?! Yup – maybe we’ll get there in a few weeks…
Lesser Slave Lake is about 100km long east to west, and the widest point is about 15km across, north to south. We’ve had a mix of wildfire smoky days and clear blue sky days. On even the clear days, we were unable to see the far shore, so it feels more like being at the sea rather than on a lake.
Perhaps due to the fairly remote mid Alberta location, the lake and surrounding area is quiet in terms of visitors. The sandy beaches are pleasant, quiet, and the perfect place to sit and spot bird life. I’m not good at identifying birds, but the bald eagle was easy, along with the loons. We’ve seen other ducks – mergansers? – and a hawk or two, as well as terns, crows and those small birds that refuse to slow down so we can identify them! If you’re into bird life, then this is the place!
Mixed boreal forest kept us well shaded on the hot days, and the mosquitoes knew where to find us. Bug bite count? It’s gone up from two…
If you’re ever looking for quiet camping in a rugged location, and you don’t mind a bug or two, then Lesser Slave Lake might be perfect for you. We love it here!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Or did I? Perhaps this is a health and safety advisory? No, all clear here. Goodness, I don’t miss doing the safety assessments for field trips with students. Of course slips, trips and falls – otherwise, why be a child? All part of the fun…
A few photographs this week of our short out and back again hike to Margaret Falls, a lovely spot in Herald Provincial Park, BC.
A narrow trail, criss-crossed with tangled tree roots, follows the Reinecker Creek into a deep canyon as you head up stream. Not too much sunlight gets in, so the tough trees growing in here cling to the steep sides and reach for the light. Tenacious growth! Some have grown too large and heavy to cling on and have tumbled down, falling across the narrow creek, left partially held up by one side of the gorge or other.
The conditions are cool, damp and mossy, increasingly so as you approach the falls, and a welcome break, if you’re looking for it, from the warmer temperatures at the nearby lake. When you reach the falls – it is hidden from sight almost all the way by the twists and turns of the stream – it is a noisy and spectacular water force!
If you’re ever in the Shuswap region, a quick side trip to visit these falls is a pleasant diversion! It’s worth the slight risk of a slip, trip or fall…
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
We mostly had a spring in our step, enjoying the fresh greens as we hiked in the foothills through stands of aspen and spruce.
Most days started sunny and finished cloudy, with temperatures below seasonal. Cooler conditions, fewer bugs! The big show was on our last night, featuring several thunderstorms with heavy rain and some hail, rolling through one after the other. We don’t mind that weather, but Scout isn’t a fan, trembling more than those aspens.
One morning, at second coffee o’ clock, a bear wandered by, just a few metres from where we were sitting. Scout, who always lets the deer and squirrels know who’s boss (don’t tell her, but they are) didn’t even look up. All that time she spends playing at being a wolf, and she couldn’t be bothered with as little as a token growl.
The bear wasn’t bothered, not by Scout, nor by us, and off it went in search of more wildflowers, perhaps hoping to be a step ahead of the many deer in the area. We finished our coffee and enjoyed a short loop hike above the Sheep River, close to our campsite, where we saw the clouds building up over the mountains nearby. We just made it back before getting a soaking. Phew!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
As I wrote previously, we were fortunate to enjoy mostly blue skies on our trip to the western edge of Vancouver Island. But, it being largely a temperate rainforest location in the PNW, it wasn’t always wall to wall sunshine. There were a couple of almost foggy/definitely misty mornings, times that contrasted pleasantly with the overall brightness.
I’ve included a few photographs this week highlighting those coastal contrasts. What a wonderful spring delight it was to be in the greens and blues of western BC.
We’re back in landlocked AB now, where spring is in the ascendant at last, a time of rising (to near normal) seasonal temperatures, with more than a few rain showers to encourage the emerging plant life to get with being green – or what passes for luxuriant greenery in the space between the mountains and the prairies!
We’re hoping to spend a few days out in the foothills next week, see for ourselves the long awaited switch from chilly late winter (friends in Canmore have – they hope – finally put away snow shovels) to proper mountain spring. It’s a fifteen minute season before full summer…
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Leaving the mountains behind us, our task was to find spring, or at least a place with no recent snow on the ground.
So we headed west across mountains, and more mountains, emerging onto the flatland delta, continuing until the road stopped. There, we got on a ferry to cross the Salish Sea to Vancouver Island, disembarked, and headed west once again until the road stopped again.
We have found spring (almost summer by west coast standards) in one of our happy places, and, even better, have been catching up with old friends. Hard to imagine we were cooling beer in the snow a week ago.
It feels as if winter has finally let go for real, spring has arrived for sure, and summer isn’t too far around the corner. Camping days ahead!
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Muffled by snow, helped by being a good distance from the main highway and train line, Emerald Lake is a bowl of quiet, tree lined and surrounded by mountains.
Until last week, we hadn’t visited in almost ten years, but little has changed, and it still delights. Ten years is a considerable chunk of a human span, but nothing in mountain measured time. I like mountain terrain, because it keeps you small, and encourages perspective.
Speaking only for myself, lately it’s been a challenge sometimes to go about my business – the business of enjoying almost retirement and having a pleasant time living in western Canada – when it’s the case that there are utter morons (invariably but not exclusively of the right wing nut bar brigade) doing their level best to make bad situations far, far worse. I won’t go into details, you read the news. I generally (and genuinely) do try to keep things chipper on here, but, bloody hell, it’s a mess out there, isn’t it? Ok, stopping there, more or less.
Fanciful I know, but maybe the mountains shake their heads in bemusement, and perhaps even disappointment, at the grasping antics of certain tiny humans. Do mountains concern themselves with small people, particularly those fuelled by ego or narcissism? Probably not. Ok, time to stop.
Petty people, deluded by their own “grandeur” – grandeur, ha! – as if! Oh, come on, the word isn’t grandeur – let’s try greed! I have to laugh at their smallness, their lack of awareness, of what they really signify in the grand scheme. Ok, stopping here, for sure, more or less.
Thank goodness for vast landscapes and quiet places, locations that might remind us nothing lasts forever, and of exactly how big or small we really are…
Thanks for reading – what passes for normal service will resume next week – and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Longer daylight hours, the soft warmth of springlike days, and the promise of a cold drink on a sunny patio – sure, let’s spring forward!
Might have to wait a little longer for some of those springing forward benefits around here?
In the meantime, we don’t have to dream of the beach to visit the beach, not here!
Oh well! Glass half full, it’s almost spring, or soon will be, and in the meantime, we’re off to the mountains for a few days, to enjoy the rain, and maybe even the snow, if our cabin is at a high enough elevation…
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
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