Jun 4, 2016

sittin and knittin

It's a hot one. Too hot, it seems, to be hidden under an 80" square quilt, wrestling with its quilting, or using an iron for piecing. So I'm knitting. House to myself and working on Oda. Dog is behaving and probably still tired from her long run yesterday.



Happy weekend!


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Jun 1, 2016

May long weekend road trip

If you only care about crafts, you can stop reading now. This is a different sort of post.

If you only care about the west Kootenay region of BC, this post is for you! Hi Karen!!

On the BC May long weekend, hubby and I hit the road and got as far as Grand Forks on Friday. We got a bit of a later start, and the traffic was as horrendous as you can imagine getting through the heavily populated areas. So Grand Forks was far enough.

We stopped in Hedley to see family and I got hugs from two young sorta-cousins, a sorta-uncle, my closest sorta-cousin, and her husband. I missed my closest sorta-cousin's sister (also my closest sorta-cousin - the two of them are kind of a set) because she was out on a ride somewhere. That will be the last time we see the sorta-uncle in downtown Hedley because they're moving this week, if they haven't moved already. So happy for them!

It was sunny and lovely in Hedley on Friday. We left, and planned to stop for dinner in Osoyoos. We had the dog with us, so after some discussion, decided to pick up Subway and eat it by the lake. It was really windy and not warm, so we ate in the car pointing at the lake. Hubby saw a lynx (he thinks) and a brown bear of some kind somewhere around the Rock Creek area.

On Saturday morning, we got up, packed up and drove past Christina Lake and down to Rossland for breakfast. On the way, we stopped at this sign:

Then we stopped at the outdoor section of a Rossland museum. It was raining, but just lightly. Lots o' pictures here.

Then we had breakfast at Clansey's in Rossland and it was really, really good. After that, we drove through Warfield, and on the way down from Warfield to Trail, you go under two train overpasses. At one of them, you see the Tunnel Pub on one side of the road and this tunnel on the other side. It doesn't go anywhere and we don't know what it's left over from, but it was a nice place to stop and have a look. While we were there, a train went overhead to Teck, carrying anhydrous ammonia for the fertilizer operation.

Then we went to downtown Trail, the Trail airport, and we did a short walk to the river on the little trail close to the airport. That's the Columbia river. It's big. It's dammed - several times. It got smokin' hot while we were down by the river, which made for a really warm walk back up to the car. On our way back to downtown Trail, we saw Ken carrying rebar. Hi Ken!


We also drove up to the part of Trail where houses were placed in a terraced fashion, and the roads are wonky and there are covered staircases that cross-cut the winding roads. You don't have to drive very far to get this high. That's the Columbia river with Teck on the left, seeming to make all the clouds out of its stacks.

On the highway between Trail and Castlegar, you have to watch for wildlife. We now know where the turkeys go when they need to get to the other side - - highway 22. When we saw the turkey jogging down the road against traffic that was going 80km/h, it wasn't near this sign. That's why she didn't cross the road. She was just running to get to the sign so she could cross, I'm sure.

We then spent time at Don's house on the way to Nelson, where we planned to stay for Saturday night. Hubby and Don went shooting in Don's backyard and scared THE CRAP out of the dog. She took off faster than I've ever seen her run and went to hide under our car.

When we got to Nelson and got checked in, we went down to the lake to walk the dog a bit. She wasn't allowed on the path close to the lake for a big chunk of it, so we walked around to where we could get down close to the lake. It's called Lakeside Park and you can see the current in it and I'm not really convinced that it shouldn't be called a river. It's also dammed a lot and it's a pretty long and skinny lake ... kind of like a river.

There is apparently a loud noise every so often to scare the geese off the field. You can see why they might need that.

And the darned things breed like crazy! Cute though, right?

This mural is seen when you're coming out of the under-bridge parking area close to the lake. The bridge was orange, but they did work on the lower half of it and painted that a fresh pink colour. It's totally noticeable that halfway up the bridge there's a colour change and it bugs the heck out of Stephan, who lives in the area but not in the city.

Cutest Dairy Queen ever exists in Nelson. It's only open for 6 months of the year. While I was sitting outside with the dog, a mom came by and asked if the dog was friendly because her daughter wanted to say hello. The daughter was 2.5 years old and was super cute. She had some serious doggy tunnel-vision. We had a good chat and part of it went like this:

Dog: <whines>
Child: "What's she doing?"
Me: "She's whining. Don't you whine?" (mocking children can be fun)
Child: "No." Dead serious. Not even like she knows she's lying to me.
Child's Mother: <finds it hard to suppress her laughter, as all mothers would>

This is Nelson's courthouse. It's very old and very well covered in climbing plants, which makes it lovely to look at. It was designed by the same person who designed the Empress hotel in Victoria, BC.

Sunday morning we got breakfast and then we went to Kaslo, also on Kootenay "lake". We were hoping that the weather would clear up and it would be a nice day for walking around during May Days, and for watching the log rolling and whatnot. It was not nice. It was pouring. We did get out and walk to see the car show and the steam engine display, and we got the kid a shirt, but we didn't stay very long.

We were supposed to go back to Grand Forks for the night, but we would have been there so early and didn't want to do nothing, so we decided to go through New Denver, Nakusp, and then out to Vernon, Kelowna and home. We stopped at a little drive-in restaurant in Nakusp and ate at a covered picnic table. In the rain. The dog had to check it out.

We saw these little rental domes on the road as well, but I think I have this out of order. They were probably closer to New Denver because they're close to Slocan Lake, but I should check a map. Yeah, close to New Denver.

And we took our car on a cute little ferry to get across to the Vernon side and enter the Okanagan from the Kootenays. In the rain. It was the Needles - Fauquier ferry on highway 6 that crosses Upper Arrow Lake. I don't actually know where the Kootenays become the Okanagan, but I know that Vernon isn't in the Kootenays, so the division is somewhere between that ferry and Vernon.

And then we carried on home. It was a good trip with lots of driving and lots of looking around. We will have to go back and tour around the Slocan Valley and see what we can find there. And we'll also have to go right into New Denver because we didn't this time and I missed a yarn shop.



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