Let's Try This Again

As I was dragging the sick Silver Subie home from my last trip, I wondered what would come of my planned trip to British Columbia. This is a trip that was originally planned to happen two years ago, but we all know what happened!

I've loved the capabilities of the old Subaru, but after considerable discussion together, we've decided that it's not worth investing yet more time, effort, and money. Instead, I removed the top box and the easily transferable mods, and sent the Subie off. When I get back from the next trip, we'll likely do some shopping. Maybe something even more boxy and much younger!

For the upcoming trip, I'll use BJ's Subaru Outback. It has less headroom, but more length. I should know better than to share the plans, but her Outback is 13 years younger and has 185,000 fewer miles than the Silver Subie.

The plan is to take head toward Bend, OR, spend a couple days there, then to the Skagit Valley for a High School reunion for geezers.

We cached in all of the eastern "regional governmental units" of British Columbia when we did our last Alaska trip in 2019. If I'd been smart, we would have turned right when we got to the south end of the Cassiar Highway to visit Prince Rupert, but instead we headed east. I'm leaving Prince Rupert out of my plans this summer - it's now 1,000 miles out of the way!

Thanks to a two week gap between the reunion I'm attending and the very large geocaching event in Abbotsford, I'll have time to visit all of the remaining "counties" in the southwest part of BC. I'll start with Vancouver Island, then cross to the Sunshine Coast before continuing to Williams Lake and out to Bella Coola before returning to the Abbotsford area. 

If all goes as planned, after attending another major geocaching event in Seattle, I'll head home via Spokane and western Montana which will position me to pick up those orphaned counties in Idaho & Wyoming. 

Here's hoping! 37 days and a bit over 7,000 miles. Should be fun!

Chasing Cinnamon Buns & Animals

The dense smoke from the fires in Alberta had us a bit askew and likely had an impact on what animals we spotted.

For a couple days we suggested the only animals we would see for this trip were on yellow signs, and that was nearly true for moose and absolutely true for stone sheep.

We had a couple good bear days, including one day when we spotted four different ones. I was especially pleased to get this picture of a black bear grubbing for insects.

BJ got proof that I wasn't that close.

In addition to animals, I was chasing cinnamon rolls or cinnamon buns as they are known here. Tetsa River Service claims to be the Cinnamon Bun Center of the Galaxy or something like that. With the weather cooler and wetter than forecast, we decided that staying here overnight would be more appropriate than our planned stop 10 miles and 1,000 foot higher.

Obviously, while their self promotion got initial attention, they've also received some meaningful recognition of their skills. By overnighting, we even managed to arrange to enjoy ours at a more socially acceptable time of day.

What a great way to start the day! (And no, I didn't share - BJ got her own.)

As last time we were here, I was taken by the sign on the gas pump. Turns out the price per liter was the same this time as last, but with the difference in exchange rate, it was much cheaper than before.

We did see wood bison several times along the way including some young ones,

and a single porcupine that didn't look too happy about being photographed!

In the interest of journalistic research, we stopped early one morning at Johnson's Crossing to check out their highly regarded cinnamon buns. They were good, but in the opinion of the judge (me), Tetsa can continue to make their claim to fame.

West, North, East, & Even a Bit South

Our route through BC was designed to pick up as many 'regional municipalities' (counties) as possible while getting us time in Kelowna and eventually to Alaska. From Kelowna, we headed to Kamloops. Along the way, we dropped off one of the #smokeybear75 trackables, simply because the cache was titled, "Smokey Bear Rested Here - On Way to Vernon!"

I was especially impressed with one of the earth caches near Kamloops. We were able to buy fuel, observe the EC requirements and find a spot to park for lunch, all within 300 feet of one another. Very efficient!

One of the other earth caches we attempted has now been signed so that you can't approach as close as we would have liked,

while another purported to featured painted cliffs, but nothing like the painted cliffs in the southwest. We did, however see a mountain sheep here - the only one we've seen on the trip so far.

We wandered around 100 Mile House looking at murals and discovering the town is bigger than I thought. We took advantage of their municipal campground for the night.

I really enjoyed this central part of B.C.  Lots of open, grassy valleys fringed by tree covered mountain ranges. Lots of old buildings including some very large log barns.

Had we been traveling slower, I would have been tempted to check out the Antique Machinery Park instead of just visiting the cache.

Last time we came home from our Alaska trip, we'd noted lots of "No Camping" signs at rest stops and other pullouts along the highway. This was the only one I spotted in B.C. this trip, but they are quite prevalent in Yukon. (The blog will get there eventually...)

We spent one night at Crooked River Prov. Park, in part because there was an earth cache and a traditional cache near the day use area. When we logged our earth cache observations, the cache owner mentioned there was a new cache near the park entrance so we stopped and snagged a First To Find the next morning.

I took a bunch of pictures at Dawson Creek because it's such an iconic location, and then managed to lose all of them when trying to download them to the computer. This was the only survivor.

Where to Next?

Regular readers long ago figured out that the blog tends to trail real time by weeks. Sometimes, I'll have several already written & scheduled for future publication. Other times, it's just a title and some notes.

This one sat in the Blogger editor for weeks with the title and some cryptic notes, "Working our way north - jasper - Vancouver Island."

We had plans to depart May 15th, wander our way north, cross paths with our son & his family in Jasper for Memorial Day weekend, and then head for Vancouver Island for a few weeks. Key word is "had."

Instead, we're still at home, traveling twice a week to Physical Therapy appointments for BJ. Her back is slowly getting better, but we're not committing to thousands of miles of travel this summer.

I'm hoping that we'll get out together for some short trips later in the summer.

Meanwhile, we've invested in something that BJ's wanted for years.  We're both really impressed with how well this ILIFE V3s Robotic Vacuum does. I finally gave up trying to get a good picture of it in action and decided to use this fuzzy one instead.

Looks like I'll be spending some time creating more 'interesting' caches in the shop this summer.