A beautiful healthy little brown (black) bear. Probably a yearling. I spotted him running away when I went out to bring in the laundry.
A few minutes later he came back and Leo got these photos. Then he scared him out of the yard.
Unfortunately he'd already eaten all but two of the apples off our tree.
We get bears in our neighborhood every year since we're on the edge of town. Hope he doesn't get himself shot.
As a companion to the photo of all the women at Mahood Lake, here's all the guys playing bocci ball, courtesy of Patti.
Pat got a good photo of this too:
All was well until it started to rain about an hour into the hike. We continued on because we were nearing the 3.8 km mark.
We passed through a miniature club moss forest:
The rain got heavier. Still no lake. We reached the 2 hour point. Finally Leo and Mark went ahead for 10 minutes. They got to the bottom of another hill and figured it was not worth going any further in the rain. We hiked back in the rain, all of us cold and soaked.
When we got home from our camping trip I was able to download my data from my GPS watch.
Almost made it. My GPS noted the distance I'd traveled (one way) was 4.8 km. False advertising! From the topo you can see if Mark and Leo had climbed that last hill they would have reached the lake!
If only we could have warmed up around a roaring fire. But the fire ban was still in force. They removed it a few days later, after the long weekend.
Next morning we packed up and slowly headed home. Some of us stopped off at the 108 rest stop for lunch.
Lastly here's a great picture Pat took of the ladies at the Mahood Lake boat launch.
In the morning we did the hike to two falls.
The first, Mahood Falls, is pretty much obscured now by growing trees, so no photos.
A little further on we got to Canim Falls:
You can walk right up the edge of these falls
I did not want. But Leo took some shots:
Fall colours are starting to show on the trail.
In the afternoon we drove to the Deception Falls trailhead.
We heard some crashing in the bushes and then came across this on the trail.
Deception Falls was the highest of the waterfalls we visited.
Five couples came together for the trip. Although the access to the lake is via 100 Mile House, the park is actually in the Kamloops Region. We'd had recent rains but the Kamloops area is still experiencing wildfires so there was a campfire ban in place. A disappointment as it was cold at night.
Here's our trailer nestled into our campsite.
It looks deceptively roomy, we were actually quite squeezed into our small double site:
In the afternoon we paddled down Mahood Lake to Deception Point. What a fabulous afternoon.
The beach at Deception Point is loaded with perfect flat skipping stones.
I just recently was listening to a piece on CBC where they discussed the science of skipping stones. According to the expert, a skipping stone does not need to be flat, just very smooth. Perfect opportunity to test out this theory! I had no trouble skipping the flat ones, but the smooth round ones sunk like,well, a stone.
(This is the 2nd time the scientists of Quirks and Quarks have been proven wrong in my personal experience. Not a bad record in 60 years, actually. The other time the expert asserted that many children have freckles, but only redheads keep them into adulthood. Hah, says this 63 year-old freckled former brunette!)
On our way back we paddled right up to these two birds.
Red-necked phalaropes! I've only ever seen phalaropes once before in my life.
Phalaropes are oddball sandpipers that feed in the water not on the shore. They spin around in the water stirring up their food. Bird of the day!
One last photo of this gorgeous day:
Some photos from our hike to Quality Falls in Tumbler Ridge
