Our Trip to Kamloops and Beyond

It has been quite a while since my last post but it hasn't been because there haven't been any new adventures! Just too busy to record any of them. But it is time to try to make amends.

Back on February 26th Janice and I flew from Thunder Bay to Kamloops, BC, to visit our son James and his family and to take in the 2014 Briar, the Canadian Curling Championship. On arrival, as James and Courtenay were both working, we went to pick up Daelyn and Desiree from school. While James was able to text Desiree that we were coming he couldn't give Daelyn any advance notice so had to give us a description of how to recognise her in her winter clothing: wearing a longish black coat and wearing a "raccoon hat". Right away I pictured an old style Davy Crocket hat but when she came around the corner while her hat was not what I expected I had no difficulty recognising her!:

The next day we explored around Kamloops a bit, including checking out a couple of quilt shops as well as Fabricland. And in doing so accidentally came across the place where James is now working. He may have told us the name of the place but it stall caught us by surprise:

The owner and his brother have 4 dealerships altogether in central BC.

Since we were so close to other family and friends we decided to take a relatively short road trip by driving to Vancouver, then on to Victoria and then to Campbell River prior to returning to Kamloops.

The trip to Vancouver was relatively uneventful. Although I had tried to avoid the Coquihala Highway (Provincial Highway 5)  due to the risk of sever winter driving conditions, at every turn I was thwarted and we ended up taking it anyway. As it turned out the highway was in very good condition although the snow banks in places were pretty high! One plus though was the fact the trip was much quicker than if we had stayed on Highway 1.

As a result we arrived in Vancouver around noon but the final leg to visit our friends Don and Jan Blackadar in North Vancouver took longer than it should as I finally relented and followed the advice of my GPS which had been insisting since we started down the highway from Hope that we should be using Highway 7, on the other side of the Frazer River. As it turned out I had adjusted some default settings such that rather than favouring freeways for example it was trying to avoid them and thus the highway 7 recommendation. I can confirm that no such restriction exists now!

So we spent the afternoon with Don, as Jan had to go out for a few hours, reminiscing about old times. He and I met back in early 1978 as we shared an office together at the University of Alberta, both doing our Masters in Geology. And we have kept in touch ever since!

After spending the rest of the day and that night with the Blackadar's we then left the next morning to catch the Tsawwassen Ferry for Sydney and then on to visit Nancy in Victoria. Once again we arrived just after noon. While the previous day had been quite pleasant this particular Saturday turned out to be one of light rain and so we didn't do too much sight seeing but just spending some quality time at her place. While there I did some wiring such that all of the wires required for her flat screen TV were no longer visible but instead are now located within the wall. While not a complicated job it did require a trip to Home Depot to get some critical components, and time to stop off at one of Nancy's friends to borrow a drill.

As time was limited we left the next morning and headed north to Campbell River to visit Janice's sister Susan, Susan's daughter Shannon and family and a long time friend, Findley Bakker. Findley and I had met when I worked for PetroCanada back in 1979. He is originally from Manitouwadge and we had a lot in common, including the fact we both quit PetroCanada around the same time and headed back east to work for mining companies; me to join Inco at Shebandowan and he to work at the Geco mine in Manitouwadge. In the late 1980's the Geco mine was going to shut down so he left to work at the Myra Falls mine near Campbell River and has been in Campbell River ever since although now he works at the CanTung mine in the Yukon on a fly-in fly-out basis. The last time I saw him was in late 1991 when I was on a field trip to the Myra Falls mine and he was one of our tour guides.

So after settling in at Susan's place (about a block from Shannon's) I drove out to see Findley and spent a few hours with him reminiscing about old times, looking over his vast gun collection as well as some of his numerous hunting trophies, such as this mountain lion skin:

 

 

And here is a picture of Susan, Shannon, and Shannon's daughter Cypress. I took this picture with my phone and as I had image stabilisation on the flash was automatically turned off, thus the poor picture quality.



Plus a picture of Susan's house (note the very small amount of snow, plus it was plus 3 at the time I took this picture). The car is our rental, a Chevy Cruz.

Upon returning to Kamloops we then took in a total of 4 games from the round robin play at the Briar. I won't bore you with the details other than to say we had really good seats, 5 or 6 rows back depending on the day and about midway, thus with an excellent view of the playing area. In addition we had reasonably good seats for the final at the corner of the far end, near where the presentations of the medals and prizes were given out, including the Briar itself:

The one disappointment was the Ontario team in that they really didn't play that well and we are both surprised that they had beaten Glen Howard to get here as he certainly would have curled better. As it was, the 4 teams we figured would do well (BC, Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec) did not disappoint us although all had troublesome ends through out the week and into the playoffs. But after Manitoba was knocked out of gold medal contention we were rooting for the Koe team to win and in the end they did. The one day layoff I think had a major impact on the quality of play by the BC team.

And one last activity we took part in was helping celebrate Janice's birthday, even if a couple days early! Desiree made her a cake and even decorated it herself (she currently is taking a cake decorating class and the training has certainly paid off):

 

Well, that's enough for now! Until next time.