Island Living

The highlight of our day Wednesday was meeting Rick and Paulette, fellow bloggers who live in Cowichan Bay and winter down near Palm Springs. It never fails to amaze me when we first meet folks how comfortable the visit is. We have been reading about the goings on in each others lives for years sometimes so it is more like meeting old friends than new.

Rick has been blogging all summer about the sights and scenery in this beautiful part of the world so we thought we should follow some of his travel advice and after dinner our friends, John and Gina and their great niece, Maddocks, along with us decided to head out and visit the Kinsol Trestle. Rick had visited a couple of times earlier in the summer and even once last winter, read that visit here. It sure was an amazing structure especially when you think of the original builders and the fact that they didn’t have all the new fangled equipment that was being used to restore it. Must have been quite a feat to drag all those huge timbers into place. And can you imagine being the first loaded train across , wondering it those guys tightened the bolts and follow the plans.

Here is a shot of John, Gina, and Maddocks standing on one of those water barrel perches high about the Koksilah River. Gina is not smiling that is a terror filled grimace. One would think she didn’t like heights or something.

On the way home Brenda and I stopped to pick some blackberries along the roadside, we are just a little early for the main onslaught of berry season, but we did get enough so that we could put together a little jam later in the evening.

And here is proof of that fact, as John and I get the last batch ready for sealing.

But before we got the jam done John whipped up one of his special stir frys for us. We do a lot of things on our travels but eating well always seems to be a constant.

Thanks again for picking up the tab for lunch Rick and John and Gina for once again welcoming your most frequent unpaying customers back to your little piece of heaven. We took a little detour on our way home but will save that for another day.

On the Road Again

It was time to put a few kilometres on and see some country. Last Sunday morning, early, real early, we hit the road for the West Coast. We had a date with a ferry at 2:30 PM so as it was 600 and some miles away we needed an early start. If you get away before the tourist hit the road you can make pretty good time through the parks but once they are up it is really a scenic drive and not one to do with a schedule. A lot of pretty country but we didn’t get any pictures at all as we were focused on our deadline. Once we got to the ferry dock we had a little time to watch the scenery while the boat came in to get us.

Our destination was our friends John and Gina’s place just out of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. They run a beautiful little Bed and Breakfast along the Nanaimo River just south of town. It is a great place to decompress although being retired it is pretty hard to get pressured up anyway. Nevertheless it is a great spot and if you are ever in the area and need a spot to slow the world down this is the place for you, A Riverside B&B.

Monday morning we took off for a day trip into Victoria and although we had trouble parking the boat it all worked out in the end.

Well, we didn’t really take that boat but we did get a good look at it from our parking spot. It is the Pallada a Russian frigate that is on a tour of North America. We had a great day strolling along the waterfront and watching all the goings on. There was enough folks that it was not boring but not so many that it was crowded. The weather was perfect and the company was even better. John and Gina below, they have been friends of Brenda’s for a long time, I won’t mention how long but I think the Empress was a new hotel when they met.

After a day walking the streets and seeing the sights we headed back to our little hideaway along the river.

Tuesday was a kick back kind of day, we did a little running around in the morning, and then just loafed on deck and soaked up the atmosphere for the afternoon and then Brenda whipped up a little Cheesy potatoes, and BBQ’d steaks. Dessert was one of Gina’s apple pies with a large dollop of ice cream, followed by a walk along the river with Cleo. The shots below are of John and Gina’s dog chasing a stick in the river below their house.

 

Cleo VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Beeps, Buzzes, Chirps and the Yaha Tinda

It is a world full of beeps, buzzes, chirps, ringtones and other pesky noises. It always surprises me how many of those sounds are constantly in the background, even here at Dogpound North. But once you get 10 miles west of Sundre heading towards the Yaha Tinda Ranch those sounds rapidly are replaced with the sound of buzzing bees and creeks burbling along or thundering over the falls. Sunday morning Brenda and I waved goodbye to civilization and all of its annoying sounds and headed for the Ranch. It is only two hours from home but when it comes to decompressing it might as well be on the dark side of the moon. The only communication we have is one way, we can send a signal back home to family that we are OK or summon help with our SPOT satellite communicator, if they want us they have to either drive out or call the RCMP and have them let someone at the Ranch know we are needed, and they will come looking for us. I will apologize in advance to those with bandwidth issues, there are a lot of pictures in this post. It is a beautiful drive heading out there and we had a beautiful day to do it on. Those clouds were just rolling on by heading for somewhere else.

Quite often there is a band of wild horses grazing on that hillside in the picture above.

After setting up camp we headed up to the falls to refresh our memories.

 

After a short hike up the canyon we managed to get to the falls and with a little cropping we managed to remove all many other folks who were up here looking a little piece of heaven also. This trip we had a new traveler with us, we brought along my sons dog Mack and you will see him sprinkled throughout the pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here he is looking out the window of the truck probably wondering where he is being drug off to.

Another shot of Bighorn Creek below the falls.

 

The collage above is the view that greeted us morning, noon and night from our site at the Yaha Tinda.

Day 2 we headed out on one of our favourite rides across the Red Deer River flats and up Eagle Creek until we branched off on the Poplar Bluff trail that leads us to one of the best lunch spots in the area. From up there it seems that you can see everything for miles.

Here is Brenda coming along the trail on our Strawberry Roan gelding, that we call Blue. Long story and I am sure I have told it many times over the years so I won’t bore you with the details. Don’t much matter as he doesn’t really come when he is called anyway.

Shady spot to tie the horses and a soft bed of grass and mountain flowers for me to lay on and enjoy the view.

And what a view it is.

View from the High Trail VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The next day we took a ride up to the Scalp Creek waterslides, a naturally occurring chute that the kids use just like a commercial waterslide. Great place on a hot day I guess but boy that water looks cold to me.

Above is a shot of Brenda and the pups just watching the water roar by and the photo below a passing hiker took for us.

I have spoken of the Yaha Tinda on many occasions as it is one of our favourite spots to ride. It is a working ranch actually owned by Parks Canada the same organisation who administers all of Canada’s National Parks. This ranch was used until a few years ago to breed, raise and train all the horses that Parks Canada wardens use for their back country patrols. Recently their breeding operation has been shut down and they now purchase suitable mounts and bring them here to train them for their wardens. The wardens are also brought here for a little training on how to care for their equine partners. Now I know one of our readers Ivan from Roadtrip 2010 used to be one of those wardens so if my explanation is a little short or off base Ivan please jump in. The white shed in the background of the photo below is their feed storage area and just to the left of that and up against the tree line is the actual ranch headquarters.

After three days with no buzzes, clicks, beeps or chirps it was time to head back into the real world though. But it is possible to live without 24/7 online contact, I am hear to tell you. Although you do meet some strange folks along these trails out here it is a welcome respite from the real world.

Another Week Goes By

Caron and I headed out on Sunday to spend a little time at the Calgary Western Riders gymkhana. Although Caron has a great new horse he is a little green for this kind of outing so I loaded up an old favourite of hers from our remuda here at Dogpound North. Caron has over the years spent a lot of time and effort on Willows training so it is great to see her getting a little enjoyment out of that training. The photo below shows Caron and Willow and a little piece of the Canadian Rockies in the background.

The rest of the week has just been spent traveling back and forth to Calgary to get a bunch of stuff that needed to be done out of the way. I think we are getting close to having all of those things done.

A field just a little down the road from Dogpound North and the sprayer tracks crossing it.

After reading Al’s blog the other day I thought I needed to take a spin around my own neighbourhood and see what was up. Not having his talent with a camera I spent more time looking at crops and just enjoying the scenery than capturing a lot of great photos. I did see a few deer and one small bull moose right on our own driveway but it was getting towards dark and the photos weren’t great.

As we are loading up our horse trailer and planning on heading west to the Yaha Tinda on Sunday morning Brenda thought she should take a spin on Blue and get a little saddle time before we hit the mountain trails. We took a ride around our place and our neighbours for a total of 4 miles, not far but better than nothing. Both of our ponies have been spending a lot of time in the dry pen so they stay in shape so all that lush green grass was a bit of a temptation for them and they spent most of their time trying to steal a mouthful of grass.

That house with the green roof in the background is my son Matt’s place. He has headed back to Albania for a month or so and I am looking forward to hearing about his adventures along the Mediterranean Sea. Rumour has it that they actually drill a few wells in between beach visits.

Those nice green trees beside Brenda are the same trees behind the moose in the picture below. I took that moose picture out of our kitchen door a few years ago. There actually was another moose in the herd but he was standing to far out to fit the frame.

Alberta our home province use the logo “Wild Rose Country” on our license plates and this year the roses are a little later than usual because of the late spring.

Down the road AT Dogpound!

I am sure that out there in blogland there are sceptics that really don’t actually believe we are really at a place called Dogpound. I thought I would take you along for a little cultural exploration of our most famous celebration.

The rodeo has been going on for a lot of years and is always on the Wednesday following the last day of the bigger, but 6 year younger exhibition, the world famous Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. Now the Stampede hosts Rodeo’s Richest day on it’s Showdown Sunday but Dogpound is a must see for the true rodeo fan. At the Stampede the best view is probably on the big screen over the infield seats, at the Dogpound Rodeo you need to make sure you are not kicked by a bull raging by. Or a trick rider leaning out over the spectators.

Shelby Cumming a local girl living her dream.

The rodeo goes Wednesday afternoon but Tuesday evening there is a Ranch Rodeo where some of the local real cowboys show off their skills in a team style competition consisting of Branding, Doctoring, Sorting, Penning and of course the local favourite, the Rustling competition, where the cowboys get a steer loaded in a trailer out in the open field. Our favourite was the team with our neighbour and the Rodeo President, Billy Leask.

Hey this is an RV’ing blog so I thought we ought to see both cowboys and RV’s.

My favourite event is the Steer Wrestling, although I can never figure out what would make a cowboy jump off a perfectly good horse running 25 miles per hour just to wrassle a steer to the ground. Seems like that is what they make corrals or ropes for.

I usually don’t hang around for the bull riding event but this one had a local girl competing. Aaron used to run the ice cream shop in town but I guess she needed a little more excitement in her life.

Me I think scooping ice cream looks like more fun.

Dogpound like all rodeos has winners and losers and probably the biggest winner at this rodeo was this fellow who won the 50/50 draw to the tune of $1273.00.

Although I couldn’t get a good picture of him I am sure that he was grinning pretty widely, in fact I know he was, as it was my youngest son Matt, back from Albania, and his good old Dad bought him the ticket.

Brent Brown 1954 - 2011

A picture from Brent’s tribute reel, not sure who took it or where, but it did strike me as appropriate. He was always looking at far horizons while dealing with today,

and more often than not those horizons included a lot of ocean. June 30, late in the evening as Brenda and I were making the last preparations for our trip to Rocky Mountain House for Miss Ella’s birthday on the 1st and then our trip to Arizona the phone rang. It was my Sister-in-Law Tricia with the sad news that my little brother Brent had died at his mountain cabin near Exshaw, Alberta. My father was with them at the cabin but my mother was at her home in Calgary so I jumped in the truck and headed into town to break that horrid news to her. Now Brent had in the past had some rhythm problems with his heart but about a year ago they resolved all those issues and he had a clean bill of health, and he earned it, never was there a man more dedicated to eating right, exercising regularly and doing everything possible to ensure that he would be around to be there for his children while they were growing up. We heard on Monday night that it had nothing to do with his heart and was a massive non traumatic subarachnoid haemorrhage. The pathologist figured that there were probably no warning signs and it was almost instantaneous so that was some small comfort.

To have lived well,
Laughed often and loved much;
To have gained the respect of intelligent men
and the love of children;
To have filled a niche and accomplished a task;
To have left the world better-
whether by an improved poppy,
A perfect poem or a rescued soul;
To have appreciated earths beauty
And not failed to express it;
To have looked for the best in others,
And to have given the best of yourself.
That is achievement.
- Robert Louis Stevenson's "Achievement"

Brent was an achiever, one of those folks who seemed to always be able to make any group he was with better with just his participation. As his father-in-law said the other day when he was around the whole was always greater than the sum of its parts.

Brent on the left

In his childhood he was “hell on wheels”, and you can see the devilment in that grin and the twinkle in his eyes, and I know drove my folks to distraction with his antics. He always lived on the edge, but with him that was a well calculated risk and although he frequently suffered the consequences of his actions he never regretted taking the chance. Consequently he did and saw things that other more conventional folks missed out on. Like my youngest brother, Kelly, he was a great skier as a young man, and one of those calculated risks left him with a bad hip that he had replaced 17 years ago. His comment at the time rings poignant now, “I need a new hip now, to do things with my children and my family, and I know there is a risk getting it done so young, but who knows where I will be in twenty or thirty years when that becomes an issue.”

From the right, brother Kelly, brother Brent, and Peter Hanson (aka the fourth Brown boy)

or was it really the Mod Squad having a day on the slopes at Aspen, Colorado

As a little brother he was a force of nature, there was nothing that he didn’t do well when he put his mind to it. All of our childhood he avoided mechanical stuff with a passion but later in life he took up sailing and figured there is not always a repair shop or chandlery around the corner so he needed to be able to overhaul his boat on his own. Same with navigation, just maybe the three or four GPS’s that were around the boat would all fail, so he learned to navigate by the stars with a sextant. I remember standing out by Glenmore Reservoir while he took a sighting to figure out our location. Heck, I knew where we were, there was a street sign right behind us. But he was determined to be able to bring himself back to home without all the new fangled equipment.

In his business life as in all things he excelled. The oil industry treated him well, particularly as an "oil trader extraordinaire". Recently, he served as President of SemCanada Crude Company and a VP at Petrogas Marketing. But his beginning were a lot less auspicious, he started squeezing oranges for Orange Julius in his early teens and by the time he was sixteen he was running their stands at fairs all over western Canada. They wanted him to come to work full time with them and who knows if he had of maybe Warren Buffet would be buying Orange Julius stock instead of Coca-Cola.

Brent and his family in Cuba for New Years Eve 2009

His kids were always at the centre of his world, his oldest two Ryan and Caron are finished university and well along their journey to making their Dad proud. The younger kids, Christopher and Remee, are just 11 and 9, so still have a lot of growing to do, but their Dad has given them a foundation that will support them whichever way they go, and both sets of kids are blessed with strong, independent minded mothers who will certainly help them and each other over the bumps ahead. It gives me great pleasure to observe the love and respect that these two women who at times throughout his life, have each loved, and been loved by my brother, have for each other.

Brent aboard his Taswell,  “Ain’t Life Grand”

Brent was a sailor at heart and up until a year or so ago kept a large sailboat on the West Coast. He and his family have had many great trips around the American San Juan Islands and the Gulf Islands on the Canadian side of the border. As well as sailing there he loved to go to the Caribbean sailing and tried to get down there as often as possible. One of my great memories is of a trip that he, my father, and my other brother Kelly took a number of years ago to the British Virgin Islands. We spent a glorious week wandering around those blue-green seas with no particular destination in mind and just enjoying each others company. Great time. Another time the four of us got caught in a storm off the West Coast and with a few equipment failures like the main engine, main sail, radar reflector and navigation lights, followed by all power managed to weather the storm until the weather subsided enough for the Coast Guard to pop out and give us a hand setting some anchors.

Brent traveled the world with his family and friends and last winter spent two months in Costa Rica with his family, chronicled on his blog a “Bunch of Brown’s on a Beach” (the first picture in this entry was apparently taken by my mother on the last day Brent and his family spent in Costa Rica). And then a couple of weeks in London and Italy at the end of April and beginning of May, with his wife Tricia. As we have come to expect from Brent his timing was impeccable.

 

I have always believed that life is all about making memories and Brent certainly made more than his share.

“Catch you later bro”