Who is complaining about the weather!

Not me for sure.  We have been gone for more than 2 weeks now and so far we have had 1 day and 2 nights of rain.  For the rest it has been hot with sunshine and a few welcoming clouds.

Right now it is only 14 degrees in our trailer but if you wait a few hours, around 3 o’clock this afternoon it will be up to 30 degrees inside and I have to find some shade outside.  It is only 9 o’clock right now and the sun is still behind the hills.

On Sunday, after visiting the Fall Fair in Ashcroft we drove up to Anderson Creek campground.   We got here around 2 o’clock I would say and we figured being a Sunday on a normal weekend most campers would be gone.  Well we were wrong there were still a few campers left (they left on Monday) but we did manage to get a very nice spot with our own little area for our campfire if we want one.

Our spot at Anderson Creek Campground

and this is our own fire pit corner

But back to Ashcroft and how we spend our days there.  We finally visited the Ashcroft Manor.  We have been driving by there now for the last 40 years and always saying “we have to visit it one day” .  Well we did and had lunch there.  The manor itself is now a so so gift shop.  But they did convert another house into a tearoom and where we had lunch.  Very nice place with some old stuff on display.  Lunch was very good as well.  The portions were so big that we could not manage dessert so we will go back there just to have dessert one day.  I just hope it won’t take another 40 years before we do that.

The Tearoom - tables are set with cups and saucers.

This is an old radio as part of the furniture

Besides visiting the tearoom we also visited Desert Hills Gardens to buy some fruit and vegetables.  Again we had been there years and years ago and here things had changed as well.  They have besides their fruit and vegetables antique farm equipment on display, farm animal and the climbing goats as they called it.  These goats were fun.  They had build a tower for the goats to climb on with a top platform.  They also had a gum ball machine but it had goat feed in it instead of gum balls. Well these goats were well trained and kind of forced us to buy them some feed from this machine.

Well, are you going to put some food in that dish or not!

Finally you got the hang of it.  Just keep pulling it up.  I will help you a bit.

 

Thank you!!!  It is about time I got some food again.  I have been standing up here for I don't know how long now for someone to come along and trick them into buying me some food.

And this is the gum ball machine filled with food.  As you can tell the goats know what it is all about.

We also visited a new restaurant in Ashcroft and had lunch there.  It was located right along the railroad tracks and it had train paraphernalia inside which of course was an attraction for Leo.  I found their operating hours interesting.  Daily from 6 am to 4 pm and closed on Wednesdays.  But then I noticed another restaurant in Ashcroft which was only open for breakfast and lunch as well.  I guess they don’t do suppers in Ashcroft!

It is all about trains!

See the train passing in the background?

On another day we took a drive to Logan Lake which is located east of Ashcroft in the middle of nowhere.  It is a mining town for the big copper mine there.  We took a tour of this copper mine a few years ago and were told at that time that it would most likely close down as the copper found there was not of very high quality.  But it is still in operation.

I liked how they decorated the piles of copper or waste with the Canadian Flag.  

Now that we are here at Anderson Creek campground we have been treated to sunshine and more sunshine.  But the sun does not come above the hills until around 9 am and goes behind the hills again around 5 pm giving it some time to cool off.  29 degrees is a bit warm for me.

We walked up to Alexandria Bridge on Monday and took some pictures.

This use to be part of the main highway

Now it is a Provincial Park. It is a pretty big bridge high above the river.

The Photographer!

This display tells you some of the history of the bridge.

Last night we had a fire for the first time.  Really nice.  Here some pictures I took with my phone.  Certainly not the best but they will have to do.

Our first fire.  

Leo has been taking lots of train pictures every day and so far he is really happy with the results.  I finished a couple of books again so now I have to find something new to read.

Well this is it until next time.

Finally we are on our way!!!

Yes it has taken us some time to get a vacation but we are doing it now.  Our vacation in the Spring did not last very long, about 5 days, due to illness.  We did take about 5 days in July and visited an Indian Pow Wow and camped along the David Thompson Highway (highway 11) for a few days but that is all we have had so far.  And after not having any vacation last year we both wanted to get away this year.

Well we were suppose to leave on Thursday August 19 but after packing the trailer and getting everything ready we did not even get out of our street.  I discovered an oil leak from the truck which needed looking after.  We drove it to the garage that Thursday and by Friday evening around 6 it was ready to go again.  I was just loading up the fridge in the trailer again when Leo came around the corner with the truck and it had an even bigger oil leak this time.  So Saturday we had it towed to the garage again and by 2 pm they phoned us and said they had fixed it (again).  Our normal mechanic (James) was on vacation until Monday so we decided to leave the truck at the garage so we could have James look at it before we took it on the road again.  On Monday James felt all was well and fixed so Leo took the truck out for a 500km test drive, went back to the garage that afternoon to have it checked out and finally it was fixed.
We loaded up the trailer again on Monday night to have it ready to go on Tuesday morning early.

And we did.  By 8:14 am we were on the road to see the bears.  But first we had some train stops to make of course.  The first day we drove to Golden, had a warm lunch and made to to Revelstoke for the night.  But not without a stop in the Rogers Pass to take some train pictures in one of the tunnels for a Trains magazine competition.  It took some time for a train to come from the right direction but it finally did.  Leo was somewhat disappointed as they had changed the lights from tungsten to LED lights in the tunnel and was not as nice as he had hoped to.  Progress they call it.

I did take some pictures on our first day but I will post these later.  On our 2nd day we stopped and camped in Kamloops as Leo wanted to talk to some people at the CN and CP rail lines for an article he hopes to write in the future.  It was not the nicest day anyway as we had lots of rain on the way.

The 3rd and 4th day we stayed in Savona at a provincial campground.  Was nice but it was busy as this campground is located on Kamloops lake so there were lots of families taking advantage of the last long weekend of the year.  Saturday morning we packed up again and drove to our favourite spot - Ashcroft.  And it sounds like we are here to stay for a few days before we head north and west to join Rick and the bears.

I have to tell that while we were camped in Savona Leo spoke to some maintenance crew with CP who told him that the ‘rail sharpening train’ was going to be working on the rails between North Bend and Kamloops.  Again something Leo wanted to take repeat pictures of with his new camera to do better than he had already.  But again PROGRESS got in the way and now they sharpen the rails with different trains and in a different way.  Not as spectacular as before he said.  But he did go out yesterday afternoon to Lytton to film this event and did not get home until 5 this morning.

Today we went out to look at an Osprey nest which I had seen on my walk this morning and it looked it still had some Ospreys on it.

When we got there the bird flew off.  We set up our cameras and waited (in the heat) until we decided to leave as the bird was not coming back.  But . . .  I did take a picture of an empty Osprey nest.

We then decided to drive along the Fraser river to see if we could find more Osprey nests and we did but they were all empty.  Finally we saw an Osprey sitting in a tree and were able to capture him/her.

The road we were on was a dead end road and when we got to the end we were met by some mountain sheep or are they called dessert sheep here as the mountains really are just hills.  But again we were able to take some nice shots of the sheep.

I really like this one as the one sheep is looking at what I am trying to do.

Leo took off again this afternoon after lunch to try and get some more train pictures.  Who knows when he will be back this time.  I read my book and took a shower.
The weather today was hot with sunshine.  Now it is evening and the clouds are moving giving it just the right temperature.  Tomorrow is the Monday of the long weekend and the kids will be going back to school on Tuesday so it will be easier for us to find a spot to camp.

See you next time!