HAYING so Guess what?

Another day at Dogpound North. Our hay has been getting cut so that has given me a new landscape to work with my camera. I’ve been watching Al over at the Bayfield Bunch and trying to figure out this Photographers Eye thingy he talks about. Not sure what it is, but I just have to find what I like and that will have to do for the rest of you. Some of his tips and comments make sense when I read them but I can’t remember them all when the camera is in front of my face.

It sure helps when the man upstairs sends some interesting cloud formations by to highlight the photos, and you know since we have our hay laying down we WILL get rain out of those clouds. It would be nice to have the hay dry but seems like that is not going to happen this year.

Shot from a hill about 4 miles east of Dogpound North.

Today Brenda was into town to see our daughter Rebecca and do some last minute shopping before that new baby shows up on the scene so they had a day of shopping and talking and while they were doing that I ran into town and had lunch with Dad. After that it was a trip to our local Costco to pick up a couple of things. While we were away last winter they built a new Costco north of the city and it is not as busy as the ones in town so it is easy to pop in and pick up a thing or two, without the usual long lineups.

Clouds VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Happy Birthday Mom

Mom and her partner Charlie (yep Charlie Brown)

Today is my Mom’s birthday so Brenda and I ran into town so that we could take her to lunch. I won’t reveal her age, just let it suffice to say that she wasn’t a child bride and had graduated from University a few years before I was born. Granted she was one of the youngest graduates ever from the University of Alberta but she is past worrying about her age and almost to the bragging stage.

We once again headed down to my favourite Italian place, Gnocchi’s, and chowed down and had a good old chin wag while we ate. Come to think of it a couple of my chins wag now even when I’m not talking.

After lunch we headed back to the farm as we had some blueberries that needed to be processed into jam. Just in case in previous blogs anyone had mistaken me for the head jam cook around here, I am just unskilled labour and help with the stirring or putting the lids on while our master chef is supervising all of that activity. Only at the end of the process does my highly skilled tasting talent come into the process.

The weather here at Dogpound North has been pretty nice for hanging out and doing the things we do but we get a little rain every few days and the humidity has been pretty high for around here (50-60%) so it has not been good haying weather. It is overcast today and kinda looks like rain this evening but that said it is time the hay was cut and that is happening as I write. Now if the Lord just does his part and keeps it dry for a few days we should get that hay into stacks if we are lucky or big round bales if not.

Back at Dogpound North

We have been home for a few days and other than a few jars of jam and a little grass mowing haven’t got much done. Seems like we are busy all day but it is still hard to think of what actually got done. Sunday I ran into the city and picked up Dad and headed to the Bearspaw Farmers Market. There is always a crowd there and as Sunday was a beautiful day it seemed like there were more folks than there were vegetables', but we managed to get ourselves some great bacon, and a bundle of fresh carrots and some pickling cukes, Brenda likes to eat them with a little salt. Brenda whipped up a pork pot roast with those carrots, some new potatoes and a few onions. So I wonder where those carrots in a grocery store come from cause these farm fresh ones sure taste a lot more like the carrots I used to raid from neighbourhood gardens. Along with that great pot roast there was a fresh blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream. There goes my diet….again!

Stormy Skies VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Monday after running Dad back into town I was into my doc for my annual physical, between her, and my cardiologist, they can think of no more reasons to poke and prod at me, and told me to beat it till next spring. So now the next exciting thing that will happen around here is going to be Rebecca’s baby coming. We are in the final countdown now. Less than two weeks till the due date, and with Bec and her sister Lacey’s history, Bec was a few weeks early and Lace was in a hurry and came a full 8 weeks early, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if she was a little early. Early in August Lacey and Brenda had a baby shower for Bec and now that the baby is all showered he could come anytime.

Today I started trying to get a persistent leak we have under our sink fixed. We have had the rig into a couple of places and none have been able to find the leak, but I THINK we have isolated it as the sprayer head and the water appears to run down and make it look like it is the faucet leaking. I hauled that piece into a couple of hardware stores and one RV place looking for a replacement with no luck. But the plumbing specialist in Home Depot robbed a couple of units in his store and I think put together a reasonable facsimile of what we need. Not sure whether that will fix it but here’s hoping.

Anniversary Dinner

We left Vancouver Island and our friends place on the Nanaimo River Thursday morning and headed for the Duke Point ferry terminal.

Not our usual route but we thought we should take a run south of the border for a little celebration. Thursday was our tenth wedding anniversary and as we were to far away to make it to the Yaha Tinda we thought we should find a nice restaurant and have a nice dinner. Other than the lineup (40 minutes) at the border crossing all went well. The Homeland Security agent was a pleasant young lady who seemed to realize that we had no evil intentions towards her homeland and she just waved us on through with no difficulties. (hey aliens we may be but we do pay our property taxes on time)

The shot above is of the Peace Arch, first one from the Canadian side and the second from south of the Medicine Line. Each side has a different quote both pertinent to our close relationship with our southern siblings. We took a spin down I-5 to the town of Bellingham. We have been to Bellingham many times as for a long time my brother Brent kept his sailboat in a marina here and I visited and sailed with him quite often. We popped into Barnes and Noble, I have a Nook and the power cable was broken and they don’t sell them in Canada so we looked after that then ran over to Costco to buy some pocketbooks also. We find the Costco books cheaper than the e-books and although the Canadian dollar is, and has been at par or better with the greenback, the price on books is still better in the States.

We had a restaurant on Chuckanut Drive in mind but after checking into a hotel and getting online Brenda found one in the town of Fairhaven that appealed to her more than our first choice.  She had the Crab-stuffed shrimp and I had the Fish Special which was Mussels on rice pilaf. The shrimp were good, I tried one, and the mussels (I didn’t share) (well really she didn’t want one) were some of the best I have ever eaten.

Friday morning we got up and headed off into the fog looking for the Canadian border. It is a long drive from the Left Coast back into Alberta and takes the best part of 11 hours. With a stop for fuel along the way and a few rest breaks we arrived back at Dogpound North safe and sound and still married.

The shot above is of Mount Stephen that overlooks the little town of Field, British Columbia.

Good to be home but it looks as if the grass didn’t take a vacation so I spent part of the day getting some of that tamed as well as spraying some of my ever healthy Russian thistles. In between I managed to pick a bunch of raspberries, I am hoping enough to get a few sealers of jam. Even managed to load 30 bales of tough hay and bring it in to feed to my fat pen horses over the summer. I am trying to keep our riding pals in a little better shape this summer, just in case.

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.