Back in Willliams Lake

 I still haven't found the charger for my camera, but Leo snapped this shot of a painted turtle he and Mark found in the creek valley.

Featuring Henry the wonder dog.

And the underside:

Also years ago they planted sea buckthorn bushes in the creek valley when they built some retaining ponds.  Bad idea!  They are an aggressive invasive species from Eurasia though they haven't really spread yet from where they are planted.  

This year they are laden with berries.  We'd eaten sea buckthorn jam in Finland, and it was delicious, so Patti and I went berry picking last week. It's not an easy job. They don't strip off easily and the bushes are very thorny.  The best way is to take clippers and gloves and clip off the stems with berries attached. 

Bucket of sea buckthorn berries on their stems.

Then you take them home and put them in the freezer. When they are frozen you can snap the berries off the stem with a fork.

So far I've made buckthorn apple jam and buckthorn apple sauce to eat with yogurt. Yum.  Tastes like apricots to me but maybe it's the similar colour.

Sea buckthorn jam

We've been out paddling on the Horsefly River several times this week.  Water levels are dropping and the surf wave at Fast Eddy is perfect.  Everyone's worried about the salmon run with the blockage in the Fraser River near Big Bar. We hadn't seen any salmon in the river yet, but yesterday just as we reached the takeout Leo saw a single lonely salmon.  We hope to see more when we return on Tuesday.

The smoke from US fires that's been plaguing southern BC has finally arrived, but so far we're getting off easy.  Yesterday evening visibility was down to 10 km (versus 2 km today in Victoria) but now it's up to 24 km.

If we can see across the Fraser River to the Chilcotin Plateau in the distance air quality is not that bad.

Compare this to 2017

or 2018.