John and Aileen sometimes on the road: GEOCACHING, ROAD TRIP, BIRDING AND WORK BEE

We’ve been keeping plenty busy here in Salmon Arm. We have done some visiting, I went geocaching a couple of part days, we went in Monday morning for fasting blood tests which had positive results and have gone down to the wharf and McGuire Lake a few times. Mitzy loves to run and roll in the grass and walk with Aileen. I like to try my luck with the wildlife with my little Canon SX50. We also had our income tax returns completed and while I had to pay a large whack, luckily Aileen gets more back than I paid.

We are still enjoying our stay on the hillside at Paul and Lianne’s but not so much seeing the snow creeping way down the mountains a couple times now. Spring is struggling with daytime temperatures barely making 10C or 50F for the past few days although on Wednesday it was up to 26C which is 78.8F. We had to go and use the free dump station in the shopping mall downtown one day. We will be leaving here on Tuesday as I made an appointment to get the motor home serviced. The plan is to spend that night in the mall parking lot then head for Vancouver Island Wednesday morning. We may or may not make the trip in one day.

Yesterday saw us take a road trip over to Barriere to look over the area and explore some side roads we had never been on. There were a few surprises we had no idea that were out there. One obscure looking road that we thought probably didn’t go far had some beautiful farm land and several small holdings and it turned out to be a through road. When we were passing through Kamloops yesterday morning, as we pulled up to a red light, I noticed a friend from our park in Arizona in the next lane. Hito and his wife Dona live just four doors down from our park model in Caliente but live in Kamloops for the summer.

Today was a work bee at our daughter’s. Bev had it all planned to work with us all day but her business partner’s father was killed in an accident yesterday so Bev had to take Karen’s doggy clients today instead. She got to work with Aileen and I for the first two hours then was done in time to be in on the finish. There are just two sheets of plywood to go but Kevin will do those as there is some fitting to do and some holes to drill. Aileen worked through the whole day applying glue to the joists and using the drill to drive the screws. She went to bed right after supper as she was pooped with missing her nap, crawling over floor joists, squeezing the glue applicator and wrestling with the power drills. I’m a little pooped and sore myself. I did hop in the hot tub for a while and that helped.

The fountain has been activated for the summer in McGuire Lake in Salmon Arm

This is a male Redhead Canvasback duck I spotted in McGuire Lake

A female Red-winged Blackbird

Male Red-winged Blackbird

These falls are about 75 feet tall

This cascade was above and off to the side of the previous falls

The colouring of this area near the falls reminds me of Artist Point in Yellowstone Park

The Agate Bay Rd runs between Highway 5 and Adams Lake which is at the base of the far mountain

Looking up Adams Lake from partway up the lake. Adams Lake is about 2 miles wide and 40 miles long. The sawmill I retired from is at the foot of the lake.

Extra wood is stored on the lake in booms which are truck loads of logs encircled by a string of logs to keep them contained

You can see the individual loads of logs which are held together with metal banding to maximize storage capacity and minimize loss.

Last evening at the wharf I spend some time watching this critter. I believe it to be a mink and this image is greatly enlarged as I was across the channel from him. My shutter speed was 1/125 but I racked the lens out to 1200 mm equivalent then used the digital zoom at 200 percent. After that, I cropped the image as well.