What's going on?

 

Our art gallery has a new mural (disguising a shipping container).  We walk by it on our Wednesday walk.

But walks in the creek valley are now on hold as the city is repairing bridges.

On our last walk we saw the beaver are hard at work

building a lodge

And improving their dam

Before winter.

We also saw a coyote watching us from the opposite in his luxurious winter coat. (No photo).

It gets dark ever earlier, but still some good sunsets.

Weekend at Tatla Lake

 Our friends were housesitting at Tatla Lake and invited us for the weekend.  Mark's sister and her husband own the only piece of private -property on Tatla Lake and have recently built a house there.  It's a half hour drive in from Tatla on a bumpy gravel road.

New house on left, old cabin on right, solar array extreme right.

We were impressed with their commitment to building a small house.  It has only one bedroom upstairs and a small guest room in the basement.  They are off the grid so everything is solar powered.

It's really well insulated.

See the really thick (unfinished) walls? Proper window sills

We walked along the lakeshore 

To a point looking out over the lake.

Looking back toward the house and it's sheltering island:

In the evening a large flock of trumpeter swans flew in.

And settled on the lake.

Another walk with Nyxie the cat:

Leo and Mark used the sauna.

All in all a fun weekend.

Late Thanksgiving in Smithers

 

View of Hudson Bay Mountain dusted with snow from my mother's house.

We visited Smithers a week after Thanksgiving.  The big feast was delayed so we could share with our niece Sonja who had been working at a fishing lodge on the Babine River.  The rest of the year she lives in India so we were very happy to see her.

Not many pictures were taken, but as you can see above, the mountains were covered with snow.  We did a couple of hikes while we were there.

Sybille and Leo on trail by the Bulkley River

My birthday fell on the same weekend so I got to celebrate with my mom!

Here I am with my birthday bagels baked by brother-in-law Dave.

On the theme of Thanksgiving, we've been harvesting our garden produce, including 1 large acorn squash (10" long) and five delicata squash (ate one already).

Aren't those delicatas beautiful!

Five pounds of beets:

Some of Leo's potato harvest:

Also 6 pounds of parsnips and 2 bags of carrots (no photos)!