2013/06 NWT trip - Blanket Creek |
|||||
We set off after breakfast, bypassing the Black Diamond bridge outage and making our way to the TransCanada. We could see the damage and repairs at Canmore; the Bow River was still high but now well below flood level. This picture of the Bow was taken a bit further upstream, below Castle Mountain. We made good time as the traffic seemed light. The day steadily got hotter, (37C, 98F) at Golden as we climbed towards Rogers Pass.
Luckily, things cooled off as we dropped down towards Revelstoke. We went on to Blanket Creek, where Karen and Sandie camped last year. The park is on the road to the ferry that took us to Halcyon Hot Springs back in ’03. We were just above the Upper Arrow Lake, a reservoir but it was hard to tell; we were 140 miles from the dam, which gives an idea of the scale of things.
It’s a great little park. We walked to Sutherland Falls, a cool spot on a warm evening. Further down the hill was a large lagoon, a safe and warm spot for kids. There were orchids in the woods and great understories of thimbleberries; we were just a week too early for a meal.
Wednesday July 3rd
We took an early morning bug-free walk through dark forest; it seemed really odd not to be eaten! We ended up at the original homestead site. The first settlers were a couple of Russian cousins, and one of them had built a garden with rock walls and arches. Sadly they lost their property in the 1960s when the Columbia River was dammed to create the lakes.
We drove home over the Coquihalla, still warm and sunny. We were back a day early, surprising Jim. Our irrigation had worked and we had cherries and strawberries to eat. Jim said he’d had to give strawberries away to the neighbours. Other plants had run riot, as expected. The river looked to be higher than when we’d left but below the year’s crest back in May.
We’d clocked about four thousand miles. Was it worth it? We think so; we’d been curious about the area for a long time and now we know. The highlight of course was the flight into the Nahanni, but the waterfalls and animals and flowers were great too. We probably wouldn’t do it all again as our curiosity has been satisfied and there are an awful number of boggy forest miles between those highlights.