August 18, 2011

This morning, Oso and I went for a walk up around our overflow camping area. It is a big bite of the forest is scraped out of the mountain and has a ridge all the way around it. It climbs quite high and is heavily forested on one side. This is where we walked and Oso was so excited to have new ground to sniff. That dog does need to sniff every rock, stick and bush he sees! We went out into the forest a little bit…there are lots of deer that seem to live on top of this area so thought we might see one. What we did see was moss…it was so thick and rich and deep. As you walked you were ankle deep in it and it was as soft as a down comforter….so beautiful.

The dam is made up of huge rocks all piled up and is a wonderful place for small animals to hide. Lots of ground squirrels seem to have made their home on the dam, but we've also seen this little guy. He is a Pica, and is normally found way up high in the mountains, much higher than we are here. It's very rare to see them down this low and so I was quite excited to get a picture of him. Since I've taken the picture, I know where to look for him and have seen him almost every morning on our walk. He's a very cute little guy.

We had a bit of excitement last night. A car stopped in about 6:30 and told us there was a grizzly across the road. Well, the first thing I did was grab my camera and head over there to see if I could see it. Sure enough, there he was…a massive, cinnamon coloured grizzly walking just above the road on the hillside. What a thrill to see him! He didn’t seem very bothered by the three or four cars stopped to look at him and just kept walking south feeding on berries if he found them. The buffalo berries are starting to ripen now and that’s what they are feeding on (so says the Conservation Officer). I followed him in the truck for couple of miles and he finally came down from the mountain side of the road and crossed over to the lake side. The bush is much thicker there and he was soon lost from sight in it.

There have been grizzlies that have swum the lake and when I called in to the CO to report the sighting, they said to warn the campers just as a precaution…I did that. The bear was heading toward some day-use areas and so they were coming to keep an eye on him and make sure he passed through them without causing a problem. You'll see black spots on his back that look like his fur has been damaged...it's possible that this is a paintball stain. When a bear gets a little bit too close to people, sometimes the CO's will come out and shoot them with clear liquid paintballs to scare them away. This is the first grizzly I’ve seen in the wild, so was very excited about it…when I got back to the trailer I found I’d taken 78 pictures of him. Now I’ll sort through them a save a half dozen or so that turned out the best.

We had a pretty uneventful weekend even though it was busy and we were at capacity. The weather was absolutely perfect and everyone was fishing or boating or hiking. We watched hikers climb the mountain across the dam…still amazes me that they get to the top and stand on the ridge and can be seen from here looking like little ants on the mountaintop. One of the sites was occupied by fishermen who come up a couple times during the summer. We got to know them a bit last time they were here and this time I joked with them that if they caught too many fish, they would know where to drop some off. Well, darned if one of the fellows didn’t come by with three nice big lake trout. We had planned on bbq-ing steaks but quickly put them away and had fresh lake trout instead…it had a wonderful delicate flavour and we managed to each eat one whole fish. (Oso loved the bits of scraps I saved for him too!)

I saw a moose on the way home from town the other day...at least I saw a moose's head...darn thing wouldn't move out of the brush so I could get a decent picture...oh, well, the picture shows her in her natural surroundings.

We did have a bunch of guys, 18 of them, try to camp here and have a stag party for one of the guys. We told them no parties and no fires in overflow so they decided to leave. Half of them were already drunk and they went and sat across the lake and got their coolers out and proceeded to party some more. I called the CO (the last thing we need on these mountain roads are 7 car-loads of drunks driving around) and let them know but before they arrived the guys took off south toward Boulton Creek. I expect they found some place in the bush for their party as the CO never did find them. The CO’s have the same authority as Police in this area. They stop people for traffic violations, take care of any problems involving violence or security, as well as take care of the great outdoors. They are really good with us and seem to appreciate any tips we can forward to them about things like the party boys or bear sightings.

Tom went for a dip in the lake on Saturday…it was mighty cold, but he braved it. He even took Oso out to see if he would swim back and he swam like a pro. I don’t know if he could keep up with Alyssa’s pugs when they swim with the big dogs, but I’m sure he’d try.

I’ve been doing a lot of sketching and drawing lately. Seems my preference is for coloured pencil drawing, even though I did bring my paints with me. The weather has a lot to do with this though as once I get set up and the weather change, I can quite quickly and easily gather my pencils and put them away. Paints would be another story. The dust and wind also present a problem with painting, though today it’s rainy and there is definitely no dust on the road.

It was a sunny weekend with temperatures in the 70’s and on Monday, when I wrote this, it was 44 degrees and stormy outside. Nice day to snuggle in with a good book. Since then we've had warm days and stormy days...the weather can't quite seem to decide what to do. It's been cold in the mornings and milder by afternoon, but last night we lost a tarp to the wind. Oh well, I'd be complaining if it were too hot I suppose. There is a kind of beauty and freshness to the mountains and the weather here...I really do love it.