Christmas in Smithers

Snowshoeing on Hudson's Bay Mountain

Christmas Bird counting on Seymour Lake

Some of the hundreds of waxwing in downtown Smithers

Christmas Elves

My sisters and I got these green felt hats in Germany when we were little girls (2, 5 and 7 years old).

Sally Ann Kettle

This month Leo and I  sang Thursday afternoons at the Wholesale Club to raise money for the Salvation Army.  Here we have special guests from the men's choir and Samuel with his soprano saxophone.

Here's another shot of the two of us singing with Samuel's father:

Various friends, acquaintances and strangers came by to shop joined in on a tune or two.

Tuba Christmas

Great concert last night with Tuba John brass ensemble, and two choirs including Leo in the men's choir.

Photo and video from the Williams Lake Tribune.  Here's the link to the whole article.

More on the World Rogaine Championship in Latvia

Here's a link to the article in the Williams Lake Tribune.

More Cariboo Gold Swing Night

Shiny Stockings

Or this link for bigger and better

Strutting with Some Barbecue

or this link for bigger size and better sound

Gentle Rain

Or this link for bigger and better

Swing Night at the Limelight

I like how this photo shows the eponymous "limelight" of the theatre.

The Cariboo Gold Dance Band had our annual concert/dance at the Limelight Theatre this weekend with special guest star soloist Tom Keenleyside, a well-known saxaphonist/flute player from Vancouver.  Well, well known if you listen to Hot Air on CBC radio every Saturday at 5 pm while you're making dinner.

That's Tom in the black shirt on the left.

We had a sold out show again this year, we even had to turn people away from the door.  And we even had a full dance floor by the end of the evening.

If it looks like I'm in the centre of every photo that may have to do with the inherent bias of the night's official photographer (Leo).

We all agreed this is the best the band has played in all 33 years of its existence and we are playing more difficult charts.

It was a fun evening!

Weekend in Richmond

Boardwalk on Finn Slough

On the last weekend in October, Leo had an ALS fundraising workshop in Richmond, so I came along for the ride.  

On Friday we checked out Granville Island with friends Ken and Sue.

While Leo was workshopping on Saturday I went touristing in the Richmond area.

First off I went to Finn Slough, an old Finnish fishing community located on the water on the south end of Lulu Island.

There are still shacks and houseboats and a few fishing boats on the slough.  To the west you can walk along the dike.

After that I headed to Steveston for lunch.  Then I discovered the Cannery museum was free till the end of 2017 (as part of the free National Parks for Canada's 150th anniversary).  So I spent a few hours checking out the displays and learning how a cannery worked.

It was interesting to read about how the cannery jobs were divided up based on ethnicity (White, First Nations, Japanese and Chinese) and gender and paid accordingly.

On Saturday evening we were invited to dinner at friends' Ann Marie and Andy's house, and what a sumptuous spread it was!

Food all eaten, but cool tablecloth, eh!

Sunny Fall Day in the Cariboo

A couple of weeks ago we went for a walk along the Fox Mountain trails, with great views down to Williams Lake.

Cariboo History Tour

Leo and I signed up for the Elder College's History Tour of the Cariboo.  There were 3 days of bus tours.

The first day we drove down to Dog Creek with Dot Unrau as our guide.  Dot grew up on  a ranch in Dog Creek, and her family were pioneers in the area.

Typical Dog Creek scenery

What I learnt on this trip is that the (white) community of Dog Creek once had 500 people.  It was a supply point for the Cariboo Gold Rush, they grew wheat and had 2 grist mills operating! In the winter many of the miners would leave the cold and snowy Barkerville and spend the winter in shacks in the warmer locations, including Dog Creek.

Our second trip was south to 100 Mile House, with stops at 108 Mile House,

108 Mile House with longest log barn in BC in the background.

100 Mile House, where the whole town was once owned by the Emissaries of Divine Light, the personal religion of the Marquess of Exeter,

and various other roadhouses in between, with our final stop at 

Tthe restored one-room schoolhouse at 150 Mile House.

Guide Barry Sale holds forth in the schoolroom.

Our final trip was up to Quesnel, stopping at a number of roadhouses and old ranches on the way, including lunch at the Australian Ranch, and finishing off at the Quesnel Museum.

Not a roadhouse, but an original ranch house in Kersley.

On our way back we drove down the west side of the Fraser, crossed at Rudy Johnson Bridge, and back to town along the Soda Creek Road, passing through an area devastated by the recent wildfires. Approx. 7 houses were lost there.

Senior's Games, Vernon, BC

Leo participated in the Senior's Games again this September, held in Vernon this year.  We stayed at Kekuli Bay Provincial Park on Kalamalka Lake,

There's an undeveloped rail trail from Vernon to Kelowna that passes through the park.

only 10 minutes from the recently built track at Okanagan College.

Leo participated in a number of track events, from the 800 meters to the 5000 meters, racewalking, and several relays.

Connie competed successfully in what she does best, spectating:

The 10 km road race went from a viewpoint down to the campsite and back up again, with views like this:

Leo was first in his age class in the 10 k

But Robert from Vancouver was hot on his heels the whole way.

As always Leo did well, winning 8 medals, including 4 gold!

Tartu

From every appearance Tartu is a wonderful little city, a university town since 1632, built along the Emajogi river,

full of young students, with a lovely old town,

 and a ruined cathedral on a hilltop,

We walked by many of these sights, stopped for a delicious buffet lunch, and within 2 hours we were overcome with food poisoning and spent the next three days in our hotel room.

Also, if you are looking for a quiet place to sleep, perhaps you should pay attention to the fact that your hotel is built to resemble a bierstein?

Alexandri Hotel

We stayed an extra day in Tartu to get over our illness, then drove back to Riga, stayed in a hotel right at the airport, got up at 5 am to catch our plane, and fortunately were recuperate enough to make it home without incident!

Walking Tour of Narva

View of Narva River showing opposing forts Narva Castlexx (Estonia) on the left and Ivangorod fortress in Russia on the right

On Day 2 we drove downtown, parked near the main square (any further and we would be driving over the bridge to Russia), and took a walking tour of the city.

We started out by checking out the Lutheran Cathedral and then the more attractive Orthodox church.

It's surrounded by Soviet Style apartments and another example of  typical Soviet architecture, the row of derelect sheds for the apartment dwellers' storage.

Then we walked along the river and down to the swimming beach.  From the swimming beach there was a bridge to an island in the river and then a view over to the Russian fort.

The blue shed appears to belong to a muscle building club for bare-chested retired men.  It was full of ancient looking barbells and on the right of the photo under the trees is a set of monkey bars for chinups, etc.

No fun allowed, Narva style:

in 3 languages

From there we visited the museum in the fort.

we climbed up the tower there were museum displays on multiple levels, till we got to the gallery at the top, where we could peer out in every direction,

With views of the old town

The steeple is the city hall.

the new town with its Soviet apartments,

the Russian side of the river,

and down into the courtyard below

That's the bridge to Russia in the rear of the photo.

where earlier in the summer they have demonstrations of the old ways of life in the fort.  Sorry we missed this! It looks like it would have been fun.

Then we checked out the town hall.

It looks impressive in this photo but actually it was quite run down and vacant.

We had a late lunch at a Turkish restaurant then back to the campsite for the rest of the evening.

Invertebrate of the day:

The Peacock Inachis io 

Narva

Narva is located in the extreme northwest of Estonia, across the Narva river from Russia.  It was bombed heavily in the 2nd World War so little of the original old city remains.    The Soviets built many ugly apartments and the area is economically repressed so less of them have been fixed up than in the other cities.

The majority of the citizens are of Russian, not Estonian, heritage and 95% are Russian speaking.  So it's defiantly a different atmosphere.  Narva gets a bad rap from the guidebooks and from other tourists we met.  Certainly it was harder to find English speakers.

But we didn't find Narva so bad.  

We started out at the beach resort of Narva-Jöesuu, formerly a popular beach resort with the Tsars and the Soviets.  It hasn't really been resurrected since liberation, so there's a lot of derelict buildings and overgrown lots with a few big spa hotels along the beach.  

Derelict former Tsarist pleasure palace.  The photos in the windows are a nice touch.

The beach is beautiful though.

It was a bit busier than it looks here.  People were sunbathing but no swimmers.  Too cold!

We stayed in a former manor farm, Vana-Olgina-Mois.  There were no other campers, but it turned out there were quite a few construction workers staying in the cabins and the hostel; in the evenings the dump trucks and vans would show up and they'd all pile out.

Lahemaa National Park

We spent two days in Estonia's Lahemaa National Park.  It was created to protect the landscape of erratic stones swept down from Scandinavia, the natural forests, bogs and the fishing villages.

Have to admit the boulders make the scenery more interesting than the endless sandy beaches along the Baltic Coast.

On Sunday we hiked along what must be the longest boardwalk in the world through Viru Bog, along with a significant portion of Tallinn's population out for a Sunday walk.

Although these pictures have been strategically taken to hide the masses

We hiked out to the end of Parispea peninsula and visited significant (signed and named) boulders on the beach and in the forest.

House sized boulder on the northernmost point of Estonia

We hiked a nature trail around a beaver pond but started in the wrong direction and liked that part the best, following the dark moving stream.

At the former forestry station at Oandu (now National Park Visitor Centre) we walked the very long and thorough plant trail where we learned quite a lot about native and introduced plants.

While the only wild mammals we have seen in both Latvia and Estonia are, unfortunately, roadkilled foxes, and one live rabbit, we were interested to see the luxurious skin of a raccoon dog.  It turns out raccoon dogs are actually native to Asia and are escapees from Russian fur farms.

The next day we visited the Käsmu peninsula.

More boulders. They have spiritual significance to the Estonians.

This one is called Matskivu, ie Mats' Boulder, but noone knows who Mats is anymore.

We stopped for coffee in the village of Käsmu.  This area seems sadly short on bakeries and baked goodies in general so we were forced to order pancakes with jam, which turned out to be delicious puffy things with a generous helping of home style cherry jam.

We ate on the patio and witnessed a team building exercise where they had to cooperatively guide a bicycle up and over a sawhorse.

We also visited the village of Altja,where the National Park Service has restored or reconstructed several buildings, including the thatched roofs.  We had a snack at the tavern where the roof was in the process of being rethatched.

We also watched the thatcher smoke a cigarette in amongst the thatch scraps.  I guess they're not too worried about fires in Estonia!

They had a replica of a traditional Estonian swing in the yard.  In former times the swings were an important meeting place for youth in the villages.

We tested it ourselves later

In the evenings we walked along the bike paths into the town of Võsu.  We had to, to get away from the clouds of noseeums that descended in our campsite in the evenings.

Resting on a boat-shaped bench, funded by the European community.  The brand new smooth bike trails were very popular with bicycles and in line skaters.  We met two very accomplished skaters in matching jerseys that must have been on the Estonian speed skating team!