Thursday, August 29, 2019

Glacier National Park - Rogers Pass

The next morning we drove the short distance to Glacier National Park and set up right away at the Loop Brook Campsite.


All the mountains were hidden in clouds so we did a short hike down to Bear Falls on Connaught Creek.


Money shot:

Later in the afternoon we hiked the short but steep trail up to Marion Lake and got caught in a downpour.  We hiked through deep forest so at least we were sheltered by big trees when we stopped to rest.



Luckily when we got to the lake it stopped raining and a few mountains peeked out of the clouds.



Here's Marion Lake.


We walked over to the scree to look for pikas, but we didn't see or hear any.


Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Trip to the Kootenays - Revelstoke

We camped in to the Kootenays for a week and drove as far as Revelstoke on our first day.  We stayed at the Revelstoke Campground, a private park.  It was  busy place with  duck pond, pet goats and a swimming pool full of kids, but we were down the hill in the non-electric section where things were pretty quiet until the train rattled by mere feet from our site.

After dinner we crossed those tracks and came to a cool canyon on the Illecillewaet River.

There were fish jumping the falls above the canyon.  

There was a giant logjam in the canyon.  At this level the whole river flows underneath


And then comes out downstream.



Monday, August 26, 2019

Camping Trip to the Chilcotin



We camped 3 days in the Chilcotin at the Horn Lake recreation site.  It was surprisingly busy for but we still had a quiet lakeside spot away from everyone else.


There was supposedly a trail going around Lily pad lake, but we followed it for 45 minutes (with no lake views) from marked tree to flagging tape until we could no longer find any markers or distinguish constructed trail from animal track and had to turn around.

Lilypad Lake lives up to its name.

We wound up walking down a road to the lake.

Later that day we paddled around Horn Lake. The next day we took the boat to nearby Sapeye Lake

Putting in on Sapeye Lake

and were greeted by a retired Williams Lake forester Jim Hilton.  He invited us into his cabin, served us tea and cookies and gave us the scoop on cabin life on Sapeye Lake.

Paddling on Sapeye Lake

It was nice to get out camping around our own neighbourhood.

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Early August

We paddled the Horsefly River from Woodjam Bridge down to the town of Horsefly.  We hadn't paddled this section since our first year of  kayaking.  We enjoyed the short whitewater section through "the canyon," but it was mostly a lot of flat water which made for a long day. But it was a glorious day and the rain held off till the ride home.

This Heron was fishing from the Woodjam bridge

Mark putting in at Woodjam Bridge


Kelly in the inflatable 

Leo below the canyon

Leo's cousin visited over the long weekend.  What to do in rainy weather?  We decided to go for cinnamon buns at the Chilcotin Lodge.  Much to our surprise it was pretty busy, mostly with locals looking for a place to take their visitors on a rainy day!  Cinnamon buns highly recommended.  We hoped to drive down to Farwell Canyon, but as we were leaving the lodge a torrential thunderstorm struck!

Sunday the weather was good so we drove out to Likely and had lunch at the Likely Hilton,


and then drove out to Quesnel Forks ghost town for a look around.

Sunny weather at Quesnel Forks


Saturday, August 24, 2019

What was blooming, late July

Monkshood


Blanketflower and pink yarrow


Day Lily


Marguerites


Wildflower mix that self seeds includes poppies and larkspurs