A Visit WAY Up North

We've just returned from a week long visit to Robyn, Chris and Gabrielle in Hazelton in northern BC.

It was fantastic to see them after such a long winter and even more fantastic to spend so much fun time with Gabrielle while Robyn and Chris were at work.  Gabrielle took us to all her haunts and by the number of people who stopped to chat with her it is evident she has stolen the hearts of the whole town!

Well, I should say 'towns' as Hazelton is actually three communities in close proximity and collectively known as 'The Hazeltons'.  Robyn lives out of town and does not have internet at her house so it was strange to go for a week and not be 'connected'!

The weather was what I'll call mixed.  We had sunshine every day- that was good.  But, we also had snow pretty much every day- that was weird.  Being in the mountains the weather changes hard and fast.  Fortunately the snow didn't stick and the temperatures were quite comfortable thanks in part to the low humidity.

The scenery was nothing short of spectacular.  Huge mountains covered in snow right in their backyard.  Robyn took us to her office which is located on the banks of the Skeena River almost at the confluence of the Bulkley and the Skeena rivers.  Add the peaks of the Rocher de Boule mountains for a backdrop and you have a pretty stunning  place to work!

Just down the street from her office is the 'Ksan First Nations village.  This is a view of the village from across the Bulkley River.

During the summer the village is open as an interperative centre but we were able to take these shots of the outside.

The area is rich in First Nations history and boasts dozens of totem poles.  The weather was not condusive to shooting them this trip and I hope to be able to better when we go up again in August.

We stopped at a few of the local lakes.  Some still had the ice on while others were only recently opened.

This is Ross Lake, only 6 km from Robyn's house and my favourite so far.  I'm looking forwards to putting the canoe into this one!

How's this for a picnic spot?

Another nice lake is Sealy Lake, with a marsh area that should be great for birding soon.

And the third lake is Hospital Lake where Robyn's friend Shannon took us on a short hike to.  Thanks Shannon!

This is a good birding lake and we saw a number of species including Bufflehead, Hooded Merganser and Common Goldeneye.  Flocks of Sandhill Cranes flying overhead, Black-capped Chickadees and a Ruffed Grouse rounded out the list.

We saw a fair bit of wildlife.  Coyotes, Mule Deer, Moose- but every time it was either poor light, no where to stop safely or they were just moving too fast.  We did however, get our shots of Moose on the drive home just east of Smithers.

This was one of those times when a 500 mm lens is just a tad too long!

Switch to the other camera with the 16-85 mm and try again...

Cattle guards don't slow Moose down at all by the way.

Driving past Lac la Hache Laura spotted a number of Eagles along the lake.  I got only this quick grab shot of one on the ice looking none-too-impressed.

A bit further down the road we spotted this one gathering nest materials in a field.  I got a few flight shots, notice the grass clumps in the talons.

I have a few more pictures to edit including a family shot and some of Gabrielle and I'll probably add more from our trip north.  Thanks Robyn and Chris for a great week!

Home but not Alone

Our Hummingbirds have arrived home again.  We call him Sir Ru- a Rufous Hummingbird that comes here every year.  We've got two or three males here now and are feeding at the feeders.

The females should be arriving shortly.

Also in the garden the Daffodils are in full bloom...

And we have Hellebores...

And the tiny Violets are all over the place!

The weekend is supposed to be rainy so probably a weekend of chores inside rather than shooting.  :(

RV Musings

We bought our trailer last summer and had only a one week trip to test things out.  This trip, 3 weeks long gave us a much more detailed look at the RV lifestyle.  We stayed in RV parks this trip which gave us power, water and sewer connections.  We ran the gamut in temperatures going from snowy passes to 27C temps in Moab.

We had one morning where our water lines almost froze; only a small trickle greeted me when I went to make our morning coffee.  Our unit is winter ready with double glazed windows and insulation.  The furnace kept up without a problem and in many cases we just used a ceramic heater.  On the day it was hot we didn't even have to turn on the air conditioning as the trailer stayed quite comfortable.

We have plenty of storage and in fact had a lot more room than we needed.  Even with the stuff we bought and all the rocks that Lucy- I mean Laura, collected.

We had high head winds and hills to climb, the highest passes were Conners and Sacramento Passes at well over 7000 feet, Conners is 7280 I believe.  The truck pulled well and not once did I have to put the pedal to the metal.  The 6 speed transmission shifted well with the Tow/Haul button selected.  I did have to manually select- or force- the transmission into a lower gear on some hills.  Downhills were no problem with the transmission downshifting and holding speeds to acceptable limits.  The trailer brakes were easy to adjust and performed smoothly.

Fuel consumption, as I've mentioned earlier, ranged from 27 L/100km while fighting head winds and steep grades to finally average out to 21 L/100km once the winds dropped off and we had some downhill runs.  Cabbage Hill outside Pendelton, Oregon was a 10 km downhill run!  We climbed this on our way south with 90km headwinds, no wonder we burned a lot of fuel then!

So, a trip average of 21 is slightly better than I was hoping for.  A fully loaded trailer including winter safety equipment like tire and tow chains means that most of our trips will be better in terms of fuel consumption.

Living for three weeks in the trailer was comfortable and because of the slide gave adequate room and a comfortable living space.  I'm still trying to figure out how to make a more convenient computer station rather than using the table.  Because of photo downloading and editing this is probably the biggest hurdle to overcome.

As a practice run for longer retirement trips I would call our choice in this trailer a resounding success.

I've got a lot more editing to do but here's a couple more shots of the Colorado River in the Moab area.

This is a pedestrian/cycle bridge on one of the many cycling paths in the Moab area.  I liked how the rust blends with the surrounding canyon walls.



Back in Nanaimo...

We left Bellevue in the rain and despite a major detour which, though well marked proved a bit of a chore when you're pulling a trailer.  Once back on the freeway we headed north but did stop at a store to stock up on cheese and butter.  These items are cheap in comparison to what we pay in Canada and besides, we really like Tillamook cheese and butter!

Next stop- the border.  All our paperwork sorted out, passports ready, all non-allowed foods disposed of- we were prepared for the possible though dreaded inspection.  We get through to the booth in short order, hand over the passports and get asked Where did you go?  How long were you gone?  Any goods to declare?  Thank you, have a nice day and were back in Canada.  About this time you regret not trying to hide a couple extra bottles in the RV!

Driving through Surrey to Laura's Moms place we encounter the worst traffic of the trip.  It took longer to get onto the freeway and drive only to the next exit than it took to drive all the way through Boise despite the fact that they also are rebuilding the freeway!

After an all-too-short visit with Laura's Mom and Cory who came out to see us there we head back to the dreaded freeway. The Duke Point ferry has its last sailing at 5:45 pm on Saturdays so we had to go out to Horseshoe Bay.  More bumper-to-bumper traffic to go from 152nd to the Port Mann Bridge and then a smooth run out to the ferry terminal.

Waiting in a ferry line up with an RV is a much more pleasant experience than in a car.  We had an hour and a half to kill so we poured ourselves a drink and put our feet up in comfort.

As the ferry headed out of the terminal we literally sailed into the sunset on our final leg of our trip.  6400 KMs  at an average 21 L/100KMs.   This is slightly better than I expected and even better when you factor in the loss of milage due to the ethanol fuel that the US government has sucked the American people into believing that it is a greener choice that reduces American dependancy on foreign oil.  They put up to 10% Ethanol in their fuel and I consistently find that you get 10% less milage on that fuel.  Hmmmm.... seems to me that if I have to burn 10% more fuel to get anywhere on it I am burning the same amount of foreign oil anyway and polluting just as much.  More likely some big corporation is getting rich by producing ethanol for fuel...

This is me getting off my soapbox now...

So now we're back home.  We have a trailer to unpack, clean and a yard that needs some attention.  Oh, and I have a few gigabytes of pictures to edit....

Time to start planning the next big adventure!  Thanks for following along and note that I'll still be posting to my blog but probably more on a weekly basis.

Bellevue, Washington

We left Pendelton this morning in sunshine; the sunshine we were supposed to have yesterday- you know- when we were shooting the Harriers?

It was a beautiful drive up to the top of the Snoqualmie Pass but then we ran into the....RAIN!  Crap!  Let's turn around and head back to Moab!  Driving home is never fun.

We were thinking of coming home through the Dalles but once again rain made that somewhat less appealing.  One day we'll get good weather on this side of the mountains.

We'll be crossing back into Canada tomorrow and after visiting with Cory and Laura's Mom we should be home late tomorrow night.

But tonight we have to drink some excess liquor that we can't bring back into Canada.  That sucks!  We also have to eat up all our fruits and veggies, Gaye was kind enough to give us all their extras before they left yesterday.

Hopefully bathrooms won't be too far apart on the way home...