Catching up on the blog!

Had a fantastic day yesterday the big boss Swede's friend showed up on a harley after driving from NYC and Swede wanted to take him out for a heli hike as a treat and asked if I wanted to come along (Sorry but Carol was on her own again in the kitchen). We drove down to Hagensborg where the hanger is and the pilot Rob gave us a quick run down on helicopter safety and then we took off into the costal mountain range- the view was unbelievable. Swede pointed out some of the runs they do in the winter and where they do some of the hiking. Leonard wanted to touch down on a ridge and the pilot obliged and we put a few helicopter prints in the snow on the top off one of the peaks. Fantastic!


One of the lodges A-star helicopters

Our pilot Rob

We set down for a moment on the peak straight ahead. what a Rush!



A view of some of the heli skiing and heli hiking terrain the lodge uses

More Salmon for dinner-This one provided by one of the lodge guides.

Walkers Island

Big Cedar forest on Walker Island

More Big Cedars on Walkers Island


More!

Annalee, the lodges resident masseuse,Pat, Carol and Dill, saying goodbye.

I can't believe it's over! Yesterday the ladies said their goodbyes to the other guests, carol and Staff and we headed down to the airport (we use this term loosely). Carol was a bit concerned that the flight might be cancelled due to high winds (we didn't mention this to Dill)but it was still on. Once they checked in their baggage at the one room airport we had about an hour to kill before take off so we drove 5 minutes down the road to walker Island to check out the big cedars-they werent kidding! The forest was full of huge trees. After a lovely walk through the forest gazing at giants, listening for bears and eating thimbleberries and where Pat once again kindly attracted all the mosquitoes so that they didn't bother dill or I, we headed back to the airport where Pat and I did our best to distract Dill from the narrow runway through the mountain valley, the small prop plane that was their ride and the gusting wind that wasy blowing the huge trees around. I can be honest now since she did get on- I wouldn't have done it!!! you should have seen her face as she crossed the tarmac-I was sure she was going to run back but nope she was super brave and even gave a big wave and smile before she ducked into the plane. I did stay and watch their tiny little plane dissapear through the mountains and was perturbed by how bad it was pitching on its way up and didn't really feel good untill I called them at their hotel in Vancouver and found them safe and sound and into the brandy. They said a woman on the flight who takes it twice a week said it was the worst flight ever. I'm sure Pat and Dill will fill you all in on the details.

After the airport I drove back to the lodge as I had to serve dinner to the other guest and right as I was pouring the wine at one of the tables a black bear waltzed past the dining room window-I'm definatly going to have to get used to this or I'm going to be a lousy waitress! I'm also going to have to keep my camera on me at all times.

Carol cleaning a 38lb Salmon

Cal asked me to fillet a salmon for dinner, I said sure until I went to the cooler and saw a sea monster on ice, so Cal gave me a quick lesson on cleaning big salmon and I had to do the other one.

Yesterday he hired a Nuxalk guide down in Hagensborg to visit some petroglyphs in the area-Dilly said the hike up was "petro"-fying. We had to follow a badly maintained trail along the Thorsen creek over several rickety bridges and up steep hills to get to the site. So despite arthritic knees and bad nerves the guide and I were able to bully, prod and pull the ladies up the hill. Dill at one point found a rock to sit on and said she was fine to live there the rest of her life so I had to point out if she fainted in that position she would fall forward over the cliff into the river of glacial water below and be dragged out to sea only to be eaten by orcas-so she agreed to continue the hike. She did say it was worth it but I'm sure the thought of going back down was in the back of her mind the whole time we were at the site. The petroglyphs based on other archaeologica evidence as they can't been carbon dated are though to be 5,000-10,000 years old. They were carved by the same people in the valley today the Nuxalkmc (shortened to Nuxalk in the 1920's) Our native guide guide Nells explained the carvings using local legends.

This Glyph attracted the attention of the Maori in New Zealand and many have come to see it as it is very similar to their rock carvings in their own culture and some Naxtle have also visited New Zealand as both sea cultures feel a kinship.

Owl glyph

In the evening we opened our 6th bottle of champainge in the lounge and listened to Doug "the Trail"

tells some stories of the woods and then he played us some songs on the guitar. He was really quite good.

This morning we had breakfast with some policemen from above "the hill". The stopped at the lodge for breakfast and some fishing. The area they cover is ridiculous, from bella coola to Williams lake over 5 hours away! They told some pretty good tales of the roads especially of the hill.

Today we plan to watch the soccer game on the television and perhaps take in a Rodeo in Anahim.

Bella Coola

View from Clayton Falls just west of Bella Coola on the Estuary


Totem pole downtown Bella Coola

Artwork on the hardware store

Our Cabin

So we've officially made it to our destination yesterday-Bella Coola being about 1hr from the lodge.

Carol had to run a few errands in town so we tagged along. It's not exactly a booming metropolis but we did find an ATM in the hospital, a liquor store and post office and a pretty good supply shop. Carol took us out to lunch at the Valley Inn which was very pleasant and then we had a lovely walk up to the Clayton falls which aside from being very pretty it also supplies the hydro electricity to the town. We also picked up the biggest Salmon I have ever seen for Carol to prepare for dinner at the logdge-30 lbs each. Carol also introduced us to a friend of hers June, whose father was one of the origional norweigen settlers in the valley and told some really great stories of a west coast pioneering family.

the forest Ranger also came by to give us the location of a couple of forest fires in the provincial park but still a good distance away. There are only two ranges for entire provincial park-nearly 1 million hectars!

tomorrow we plan to head out to see some native petroglyhs with a guide but today we are just taking it easy- the weather is in high 30's so were just keeping cool.

Black bear just inside Tweedsmuir park.

Pat spotted this one! She's gotten a real eagle eye now.





Arriving at the park on the east side- Tweedsmuir lodge in on the west side of the park.

Our last day on the road started with picking up a few supplies in Williams lake for Carol, filling up with Gas and me having my last Tim Hortons coffee. Carol warned me again to competely fill up the tank and fill up again in Anahim, the last town (I use this term loosley) before "The Hill".


We can't believe we are almost there. The remaining distance to cover is about 450km. The drive started us climbing steeply up to a plateau where we could see our mountain destination in the distance. The road was fairly good for a couple of hours but kept narrowing until Anahim.


Their was very little on this road aside from incredible scencery and wildflowers, the roadside is covered in dogroses, lupin, Indian paintbrush and what looked like aspen's . In fact there was so little in the way of civilization that the unbelievable happened, Pat "went picking blackberries" (i'm not allowed to say pee-lol).


We did come across a shop on the way that sold just about everything you could want in the middle of nowhere, hunting and fishing liscenses, wine and liquor, knives, camping supplies and car parts. We just bought wine and popsicles.


We arrived in Anahim and filled up the rest of the tank as directed by Carol and got back on the highway which was now a packed dirt road. We knew the hill was coming up as there were signs posted for about 40 minutes preceding it, warning about steep grades up to 18%, new snow tires or chaines had to be on all vehicles in poor weather, Use lowest gear..etc.. At the top of the start of the hill I did feel a bit nervous but put on a brave face because Dilly was a little white in the backseat. The Hill surpased what we expected. Most of it was between 8% to 15% grade with small streches of steeper road in between. To add to the challenge it became a single lane for most of the journey down but there were some pull outs were we could allow ascending cars to pass but thankfully there was little traffic anyways. One side was rock face and the other was a sheer cliff with no barrier. We did stop halfway down to allow the brakes to cool as even in first gear we had to use the brakes a good portion of the way down as well. Carol says the road has actually improved since she first started using it!

View on "the hill"

All the bottom of the Hill, Dilly told me she now had split the world into two sets of people-those who have done the hill and those have not.

15 minutes later we arrived at Tweedsmuir lodge, where Carol treated our "hill shock" with a fantastic Salmon dinner and drinks before sending us off to bed in our own lovely cabin. Carol had told us so many bear stories before bed though we were a little nervous walking back to the cabin but did arrive in one piece. Pat insisted on a flashlight even though the way was well lit. Perhaps she was going to throw it at a bear if it came across us-I'm not too sure. The cabin is fantastic, it's first class, nothing like what we have become accostomed to on this trip.

Lounge at the lodge.

View from our cabin

We actually haven't made it into Bella coola yet-it's about a 40 minute drive down to the town. I don't think anyone wants to get in the car today so we might do it tomorrow. Dilly's refused and is propped us with a cup of tea admiring the view off of our front porch but I just might get Pat to go on a walk in the woods with me today-We'll take Carols rottwieler with us just in case!


Indian Paintbrush

Whistler to Williams lake

Whistler reflected in Green Lake

Today a black bear loped across the road in front of our car on the way to Pemberton. Usually I'm more prepared but I fumbled with the camera and my coffee and lost the shot! I'm sure there will be more opportunities.

Today we had a long drive through the Rockies. We tooled around Whistler, had a picnic in Pemberton, Streched our legs and viewed the Fraser river in Lilloet, grabed another coffee in Clinton and made it to Williams lake in time for sunset. We've checked into to a motel overlooking the lake and will probably get an early night so that we can get to Bella Coola before nightfall- Here we come Cally!

Half moon Bay on the Sunshine Coast

Our destination for Sunday-Halfmoon Bay, BC.

So Girl Friday here really let the team down yesterday-I got us lost not once, not twice but THREE TIMES!
It started with a very bad last sleep in Port townsend and getting up far too early to catch a ferry to Whitby island. We've discovered my Achilles heel-no coffee and no sleep makes for a very poor navigator. This didn't seem like to much of a problem though as our next destination was Halfmoon Bay just north of vancouver and really we estimated the trip woul only take several hours at the most to vancouver and then a short ferry ride to the sunshine coast and an even shorter trip by car to my cousin Sarah's house in halfmoon bay. Compared to some streches we've done this seemed like a duck walk.

So on an Island with only one major road I managed to take it in the wrong direction (it was overcast so I just went with my gut feeling as to where north was) so once we realized we were on the wrong end of the island we had to drive all the way back down to the other end to catch the ferry back to the mainland. This put us a bit behind schedule but we still had high hopes.

All was actually fine untill Vancouver then, the border crossing was one of the easiest I have ever done, but let me say a few words about Vancouver now- There are no signs! After a couple of hours of driving around I would have been happy to see even a sign to Alaska- anything that would have pointed us in the right direction to horseshoe bay, Pedestrians rule-they step out in front of traffic without hesitation, the oneway streets seem designed to always take you away from where you want to go and once I decided to give up and find a map we never saw a gas station or convenience store in which to buy one. I will say that while lost we covered most of the city so had we been in a better mind set it would have been more like a city tour- We even ended up Gas Town in front of the clock! Finally we found the road we had been looking for and headed out to horseshoe bay via Stanly Park and Lion's gate bridge. We killed a couple of hours in Horseshoe Bay waiting for the next ferry but at this point we were exhausted and had been on the road almost 12 hours again! The ferry ride over was actually pretty nice, great views of the coast and snow capped mountains but we were so tired that it was a bit lost on us


Once back on land we knew we only had about a forty minute drive to Sarah's and we managed to keep it together (we did stop at a liquor store with the anticipation of drinking heavily once we got there) with the knowledge that we would soon be near beds and showers.

So we found the ever so lovely yet badly laid out Halfmon bay, only to drive round and round this small little community with no luck. So it was almost 9pm when we staggered into Sarah and Steve's like lost sailors finding land. Sarah was a saint and gave us food and poured us brandy.


Today was a different story, After a great nights sleep and a lovely breakfast with several cups of coffee we were able to redeem ourselves as house guests and truly appreciate the area we were in.


Sarah and Steve have a lovely house with a fantastic garden of lavender, laurel, honeysuckle, grapes, cherries real english looking garden. ( Sarah says black bears often visit and each the fruit in the back yard!) and the lovely Lucia along with my uncle Lawrence gave us a tour of the "purple forest" where we tried Huckleberrys and saw evidence of the still elusive black bear (poop!)


After a lovely lunch we all headed down to Seargents cove to see meet Steve's parents Maria and Steve, who had some good travel stories of their own, and got to see the community restored shoreline which included a bog, berm and sea. The community had also built a fish ladder so that salmon could get up into the bog to spawn from the sea. It was a really nice relaxing day so welcome after the amount of time we had been on the road and got us ready for the next 800 kms. After another great meal, catching up with each other (really we need like a month) having a bounce on the trampoline with my youngest cousin Lucia, throwing a ball for the ever enthusiastic Hero while being watched by the ever so elegant Mr. Darcy we started to get ready for the next day.





Fish Ladder

Clams, Oyster and mussles on the beach!

We had an early start this morning with the hopes of catching the 8:30 ferry. It was a bit of a sad goodbye as it seemed like such a short visit when we all haven't seen each other in so long but we plan to rectify this in the future and hopefully we can see each other more often. It was short but really quite lovely.

Really we could have done with a couple more days.

Steve, Patricia, Lucia, Me, Lawrence, Maria, Steve.

View from the ferry leaving Horseshoe bay

Heading out-Notice the door behind-Steve made it!!!

Hurricane Ridge-Olympic Wilderness

View from the ridge-Supposed to be one of the best mountain vistas in the world! Ah well at least there was deer in the clouds.


We had a truce today-I agreed to go to the laundromat and wash my pants and the girls agreed to take another trek into the mountains. Okay so they washed the laundry and I washed the car but it was a fair arrangement I thought. I had to almost scrape the splattered bugs of the windshield and bumper-it was a good showcase of north american insect species. I also attempted to organize the car so we don't arrive at Sarah's looking like a gypsy caravan. Today we headed back into the Olympic range but this time on the North facing side up to Hurricane Ridge. Hurricane ridge offers views of Mt. Olympus and several glaciers. Unfortunatly the clouds were so low when we got to the top we couldn't see more than 30 feet in front of us. The drive up was pretty treacherous and we could only drive at about 15 m/hr with the fog lights on so it took awhile as we had to climb about 6000 feet right from sea level. It was pretty cold at the top and the snow was still on the slopes with some brave lupin flowering amids the banks. Lunch was a picnic but it required zipping pat up in a sleeping bag so that she could join us. We saw lots of black-tailed deer, grey jays, one mountain blue bird and a grouse. The Mountain lion still eludes us-perhaps we'll get lucky in BC.



View about half way up-We are almost entering the clouds.


More deer being very good and not running in front of the car as I come around hairpin turns.

Cheeky grey jay- If it was clearer you could see Vancoucer Island in the distance.

Lupin near the summit.

So I got my own way today and instead of doing laundry which was what the rest of group proposed we took off to the western most point of the olympic penninsula. Primarly we were going to book tickets on the ferry to BC from Port Angeles but we were told we had to be there by 7am and none of us felt like getting up at 6am or leaving Port townsend just yet ( don't worry Bruce-we will leave eventually !)so instead we headed towards the Hoh Rain Forest in the Olympic national park. The rain forest grows only along the cost and in ocean facing valleys. In this picture we are only at about 500" above sea level.

The tree in this picture is a Sitka Spruce growing on the slopes of mount olympus and is 500 to 550 years old and stands at about 300". the rain forest it self is made up of many trees 200-1000 years old. Everything is covered in moss.

For all the Twilight fans-we also went into Forks (Dilly had no idea what we were talking about but Pat and I got her up to speed) and visited La Push Indian revervation.

First Beach in La Push