Nicola Valley
The N'kwala forest service recreation site 20 minutes west of Merritt is our most frequented campground. We started coming here in the 90's as a meetup with Leo's relatives: his brother Arthur from 100 Mile House, his cousin Eric and his aunt Louise fom Williams Lake and his cousin Doreen and husband John from Delta. Later we camped here while paddling the Nicola River with our friends.
It's free, it's big and there's always a spot to camp, even on busy weekends as it was when we arrived on this trip.
In among the Ponderosa pines
We didn't get a picnic table but we did get a primitive fire ring (stones).
We went for a walk along the river. Lots of spawned out salmon.
We ran into a local who told us that most of the Nicola Valley was burnt up. You couldn't see anything fom the campsite.
The next morning we hiked up the hill overlooking the campground. Somehow we missed the trail so ended up bushwacking up the (steep) hillside. Bushwacking is not that big a deal on a dry interior hillside.
It took us half an hour to reach the overlook.
You can see our trailer down there.
Closeup
From there we walked uphill for another hour.
Steep
I had to take a few breaks.
But we finally reached the top.
From here we could see that the fire had burnt up the next hill.
Plant of the day:
Prickly Pear Cactus
The next day as we drove home westward toward Spences Bridge, we saw that the fire had burnt all the hillsides on both sides of the Nicola River and a few homes had burned down. Most however were saved.
Burnt to the road
This is the same fire that burnt down Lytton.
Checking out the damage
So ended our last camping trip of the season. We used our trailer 23 nights this year, which averages out to $1135 per night thus far.
For comparison we spent approximately 340 nights in our old trailer over 11 years, for an average of 31 days a year or $41 per Night. That included 4 lengthy snowbirding trips so I think we did pretty well this year.
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