What Else is New?

The end of an era.

Ever since Leo retired we have been meeting our friend Mark for coffee once a week at the Starbucks at our local Safeway.

Next week they are closing Safeway to turn it into a discount grocery.  There will no longer be a bakery, and the Starbucks closed for good on Friday, so I commemorated the occasion Thursday morning.

There's a new freestanding Starbucks down the street that took away most of the business but it's noisy and slow, and we appreciated the reduced lines at our local.  Now where will we go?

Then on Friday, Leo phoned me from downtown to tell me that our other hangout, the New World Cafe was on fire.

On a more cheerful note, we took advantage of a beautiful sunny day on Saturday for another trip down the Horsefly River.  I forgot to bring my camera so no pictures.  But we had a lovely afternoon despite the lack of documentation.

Usually we see scores of spawning sockeye at this time of year, but a blockage on the Fraser River has disrupted the spawning run.  Also, because of all the rain, the river was running as high as it was in late June so it would have been difficult to see them in the deep water.  We did see one live and several dead salmon on the banks.  Later we talked to people fishing and they said they'd seen quite a few go by.  So hopefully the run will recover.

It was really quite busy on the river.  There was a group of 12 taking a river rescue course at the put in and 2 couples camped and fishing at the takeout as well as as more fishermen on the river at the bridge in the town.

We stopped for dinner at the Soul Food Truck in downtown Horsefly and had falafel and a buffalo burger.  Excellent!