This
is about a remote area in west central British Columbia, Canada
called the West Chilcotin. Surrounded by numerous glacial mountain
ranges, alpine lakes teeming with wild Rainbow Trout, and full
of wildlife. Living here goes from no running water or electricity
to spacious log homes with all the conveniences and without
the smog!
If
you would like to see pictures of wildlife, mountains, lakes,
exciting snowmobiling, events and more, and read stories like
'Lake Monsters' about the
Lakesounds
just
go into Archives on the lower left side of this page.
Rolling over an image will give you its description.
Check out the Picture
of the Day.
31/07/20088:13 PM
Drizzle
Well,
that rain I asked for has finally arrived. Sort of....
It's been really cloudy all day and I swear it
looks like it's trying to snow over the mountains but
we haven't gotten much of anything until around supper
time when it started to drizzle a little. Actually, more
like misting at first but now there's enough moisture
that it's actually running out of the down spout I would
say that it will do wonders for our new lawn except that
those poor little blades of grass are probably shivering
in their roots. It never did get above 10C today
and that's only 50 degrees folks! The end of July
and it feels like the end of October. I don't feel so
bad though. The weathermen on the news down on the Coast
were complaining too.
I decided I would go for a walk today with only two layers
on and was sorry. Walking out on the road with a cold
breeze this afternoon exceeded the term "exhilarating".
It was more like bone chilling and I couldn't wait to
get on the trail in the woods on the way back. It was
a lot warmer and way quieter with heavy air muffling everything.
I kept a closer eye out than usual for any sign of our
hairy four footed friend but even the dogs weren't
zig zagging, noses to the trail, nearly as much as yesterday,
nor were they as excited, indicating the scent must have
been pretty fresh compared to today.
We definitely need the moisture, and a lot more than we're
getting. I noticed that a lot of the wild perennial flower
stalks and leaves are really coloring up all of a sudden.
While frosts at night have probably had a lot to do with
that, lack of moisture has probably speeded the process
up. It's stick dry in the woods and I would still
like to see a lot more rain than this, especially
in view of the weather forecast. It looks like a big high
is building in slowly off the coast and the Vancouver
area is expecting hot, sunny weather for nearly a week.
If that gets us as well, it sure would be nice to have
the ground wet going into it.
That few days that we had last week of hot weather sure
got my perennials and vegetables going. Up until then
everything was just sort of sitting in the ground shivering
but my garden is just bursting with flowers right now.
Everything has pretty much come on at once instead of
being spaced out over the summer. Weird, but pretty. I
sure hope this isn't a sign of our climate to come.
Mind you, Andy and Richard up at the store are praying
for snow so that they can go snowmobiling again. They
may just get their wish. I sure would hate to see us go
back to the old days of eight months of winter and four
months of poor sledding.
I was sitting in my office this morning and at one point
when Andy went by the doorway I asked him what the sounds
were outside. We both thought it sounded like the metal
roof was popping the way it does when it starts to really
warm up in the sun after a cold night. But it wasn't warming
up and there was no sun, so Andy went to check and called
me outside. It was the most incredible sight. Our tall
spruce tree right next to the house was just loaded with
little red birds and they were knocking the green pine
cones out of the tree and those were bouncing off the
tin roof and onto the ground. We couldn't figure out what
they were doing unless they were after bugs on or around
the cones and knocking the cones off while they were at
it. But it was just like a tree full of monkeys
knocking coconuts off a tree to bust them and the cones
were pounding the roof pretty good. Andy went
over and gave the base of the tree a good kick to dislodge
the birds. There must have been about fifty of them that
burst out of the branches while cones rained down on Andy's
head. It didn't take long and all the birds were back
and he had to do it once more before they finally left
for another tree. I have to remember to rake all the cones
up tomorrow because I just noticed tonight that they're
leaking pitch and we'll be tracking pitch in all over
the floor. I just looked up the bird after I downloaded some
pictures and they were Red Crossbills. So I guess
they were going for the seeds inside of the cones. Of
the cones they dropped I didn't see any busted apart offhand
but we'll have to take a closer look at them tomorrow.
Pretty cool. A year ago we had never seen one and now
we've had them at the feeder in winter and on our tree
this summer so far.
I'm still struggling along with the mess my thief made
of the web site so I have to get back to that. I may try
to write tomorrow but if not, it probably won't be until
later in the weekend because we're hosting a barbecue
Saturday and it's Charlotte days out at the lake all weekend.
30/07/20087:10 PM
Disadvantages Of The Internet
The
Internet is a wonderful miraculous thing. But like all
things that start out wonderful in this world, you
will inevitably have some bottom feeder come along and
discover a way to rip people off. I discovered
yesterday afternoon that some scumbag had stolen this
website, put his own header logo on it and plastered cheap
advertising on it that he's making money from when people
click on it, and all under another domain name.
As you can imagine, I hit the roof. They're called scrapers
and although I've read of them in my newsletters and forums,
I never thought I would be exposed to one. I got into
my favorite research forum and asked for help from there,
and also a fellow that is an expert in this field to find
out how to go about doing what I needed to do. The first
being to get him off the search engines. As with most low life crooks, none of his information
in the Who Is database was anything but false.
The address listed was of a nonexistent street in Riverside,
California and the phone number in Illinois. He was using
a company in Spain for one of the advertisements. When
I contacted them they said his account had already been
suspended because of fraud. He has a statistical counter
in Chinese and I suspect all of the text on the site was
translated into another language and the retranslated
into English so that it's pretty messed up. That would
prevent me from finding the duplication all that easily.
I was fortunate that the folks down at Whitesaddle
in Tatla Lake sent me an email telling me about it.
It looks like this slimeball has had the stolen and converted
site for about a year and has been climbing in the search
engines. I should have picked up on this ages ago because
I knew something had to be going on since my site was
dropping in the page rankings. Duplicate content on the
'Net will cause that. So rather than going to the effort
of building a site and spending the years that I have
on it, this piece of crap steals mine because it is up
in the SERP's and uses it to make money, as well as endangers
my standings with the search engines.
I spent most of last night, as did my wonderful Brother-in-law,
the lawyer, firing off a Notice of Copyright Infringement
to Google under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
by fax and email after copying and pasting all of my pages
that were under his domain name into the formal complaint.
That after spending hours trying to track down
who this piece of crap is. I've faxed off three
more forms today to the major search engines and will
end up spending many hours and days more trying to repair
the damage. I wouldn't mind spending the time so much
if I could ever find out who actually did it. I would
take great pleasure in feeding his testicles to my dogs.
The shame of it all is that I'm not the only one he's
doing this to. Information shows that he has 92 other
domains and is constantly moving them around on different
servers. Probably because he's constantly having
his sites banned when people like me find out that he's
ripped them off and contact his host to have the
stolen site removed. Because if the host site doesn't
remove it, then I can legally go after them for copyright
infringement. Unfortunately, he'll just move the domain
to another server. So my best recourse is to get that
domain name banned by the search engines. In which case
he'll just move my stolen material over to a different
domain name. When he does that, and if I can find it,
then I have to spend hours going through the whole thing
again filling out the forms and faxing all of the search
engines with the new information. Since each form took
me at least an hour to fill out today, it's a huge waste
of my time while the scumbag walks away with money
generated by his ads on mine and everyone else's stolen
site.
It's bad enough that we are all bombarded by spam generated
on the Internet, credit information stolen, databases
hacked, etc. but when you can't even safely have a business
or informational site up on the Internet without it being
stolen, I have to wonder how long the Internet will actually
last as a viable entity. Maybe I'm just furious because
I live in an area where locking your doors is just a formality
and you have more to fear from the mosquitoes than you
do thieves, but people that refuse to work for a living
just piss me off!
On to a more pleasant subject...if you can call
our weather pleasant. We had to cover my plants
last night and although it didn't get below 2C, we covered
them again tonight. It's been overcast for the past few
days with a chilly wind and when I went for a walk today
I just about froze my butt off. The dogs were really
doing a lot of excited zigzagging today in and
out of the woods and I figured they must be on the trail
of something. Even River was trotting along with his nose
to the ground instead of lagging so far behind me I often
think I might have to carry his sorry butt home. It wasn't
until we were about half way back on the trail through
the woods that the three sets of dog noses ended
at a pile of bear scat in the trees just off the footpath.
He's obviously been eating berries and if the size of
the scat was anything to go by, he's not a bad sized bear.
I called the dogs off and walked on, while the bear must
have continued away from there through the trees because
the dogs weren't nearly as excited about sniffing along
for scent anymore. He was probably checking over at Rainbow
Lodge for fish innards and was eating berries along the
way. The wild strawberries are coming right along and
the soap berry bushes are just laden with jewel red fruit
this year.
I'm hoping we'll either get some rain or the weather will
warm up but it's probably a vain hope. According to the
weathermen, it looks like a couple more days of cool temperatures
and low pressure systems rolling through before
there's any hope of it warming up.
The weatherman was saying yesterday that Vancouver had
received less than a millimeter of rain for seven weeks,
and then had a record rainfall of 15mm on July 29th. I
think he said that 1969 was the last time anything close
to that had been recorded. Now that's not a lot of rain
by any stretch of the imagination, but I wonder
if that's what caused the rock slide on Highway 99 going
to Whistler last night? Man, that was massive!
It looks like the whole rock face slid away and then shattered
and broke apart when it impacted the road. Those boulders
are huge and I would be awfully surprised if they have
the highway open in a week considering the state of the
train track. I imagine that the pavement beneath
has been blasted back to gravel. Considering that
Squamish, Whistler, and all points between are cut off,
it's amazing to me that there is no alternative backup
plan for the Olympics in 2010. An eight hour drive to
Vancouver if you have to go all the way around, or a $2000
flight for what would normally be an hour's drive, doesn't
seem like a very viable alternative should there be a
rock slide then. But then what do I know?
28/07/20088:49 PM
The Wrong Stuff
It's
a good thing that there are still remarkably helpful people
out there. Heidy friend has had to pull my fat out
of the fryer yet again. Apparently I was way off
on my translation of the navigational menu that I described
yesterday and I get the impression it was worth a good
laugh. She was kind enough to send along a correct translation
of not just what I did but of the whole menu, which is
wonderful! Now no more people in Europe can fall
off of their chairs laughing at my pitiful efforts.
However, it was not my intention to interrupt her chores
to fix up my mistakes just because I was eager to link
all of the translated pages to this site. But as I said,
we are lucky with the helpful people we call neighbours
here.
Michael, another reader of these articles, confirmed
my suspicion that the Vancouverites stole our good weather
today, leaving us with another grey day where
it kept trying to mist off and on. It would be nice if
it would just rain and get it over with. We could use
the moisture so I don't mind that, but if it's not going
to rain then let the sun shine. I'm freezing my
heinie off and had to start a fire in the wood stove today!
It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that
it clears off in the evening and threatens to frost overnight.
We really have to convince the weather gods that things
need to be reversed!
Michael also made a suggestion for drawing more people
to the area in summer that is actually quite a neat idea.
He suggested a Poker Run and mentioned that most are held
by people that ride motorcycles, but that they can be
long distance and draw a lot of people. As he said:
"These
runs have prizes and money in them. So the entry fee say
$10 per entry x 2000 entries $20,000 plus stuff donated
by participating locations. So for best time, no speeding,
best hand, best costume, best anything your group thinks
of gives the riders prizes. Some of these rides in the
USA coincide with other events like Daytona, World Series,
Super Bowl, Calgary stampede, PNE etc."
I think
it's a wonderful idea but I think we would have to expand
on it a bit. If we limit it to motorcycle riders, I believe
we limit ourselves to only a small number of participants,
simply because of our location and condition of our pavement.
Our new seal coat section is not liked by a lot of motorcycle
riders. However, if we expanded on Michael's idea, we
might get somewhere! Why not simply make it a Poker Run?
Motorcycles, vintage cars, show cars all welcome. If yours
is not one of the above, then either it must be decorated
or the occupants must be in costume. If we took
Michael's suggestion of tying it into a major event, then
perhaps we could make that the Bella Coola Music Festival
which occurred last weekend. It's a great draw,
it will bring attention to the Festival, bring people
to our area, and could be loads of fun! The added benefit
for participants is that Highway 20 is not a busy highway,
so in some respects, it would be a safer drive than many
other highways would be. That means we could have Poker
stops all the way along....I'm just kind of brainstorming
here as I type...but you know, it just might work! Of
course, Mike probably doesn't realize this but when you
make a suggestion requiring a lot of work in this country
that gets taken up on, you get to be the main event organizer...:-)
!! Either way, it's a cool idea and deserves to be
kicked around a bit. And why not? Lower Mainland
Tourism is getting pretty proactive with their industry.
Tourism is down at least 6% in the Vancouver and Victoria
area so they are offering to pay the BC Ferries fare to
the Island to callers, if those folks stay in a hotel
over in Victoria for two nights. It's quite a savings
and quite an incentive to draw folks in that are weary
of high fuel costs this summer. Perhaps we all need to
stop sitting on our laurels, and what Mother Nature gave
us naturally, and actually work at drawing in visitors
to our respective areas. There's a lot of competition
out there for visitors.
27/07/20088:14 PM
Weather Change
We're
finally seeing a shift in our weather now. Yesterday
was a little overcast and really nothing to write home
about. By this morning it had rained quite a bit overnight,
or at least enough to wet things down a bit. Not a bad
thing really, when you take into consideration just how
dry we really are. Most of the day was overcast and of
course that helps to keep things cool. Besides,
it meant not having to drag around water hoses today.
Of course that also meant I had no excuse to not work
on the computer today.
My friend, Heidy, over at Charlotte Lake has translated
quite a few pages of this site into German now, and while
I've had them up, I haven't really had a cohesive link
to them. I know that she's quite busy and so I decided
to try my hand at translating part of the navigation system
and I'll get her to check it over when she gets time.
Since I don't entirely trust the online translation systems,
I decided to try to guess which word she used that would
best describe the page and then checked it on the online
translation. Sometimes my guess was way
off. Sometimes not. So I'm hoping that the links are correct
and if you are German and they're not....don't laugh
too hard. While I like to do things right, this
is a busy time of year for everyone so sometimes you just
have to suck it up until there's time for correction.
Right now, I'm looking at changing the news headlines
on the German translated home page, but what to put on
there? I'm not sure if Europeans would have any interest
in reading news from Canada or British Columbia or not.
In any case, if anyone wants to go look at the new creation,
there are nine pages translated so far and you can tell
which ones those are once you are on the Deutsch index
page at http://www.resortsbc.com/Deutsch-index.html
by looking at the navigation at the left. (The exception
is the Tweedsmuir Park page which has been translated,
but the link name on the navigation on the left is unchanged.)
If nothing else, I find it fun to read through
the text and see how many words I can guess the meaning
of.
Naturally, we all realize that the English language has
stolen much from the European languages, French and German
probably being the predominant ones. Spanish too I suppose,
among others. It's fascinating to study words and see
how close some of them are to the English versions. Or
maybe my interest lies in the fact that I know what the
English text is on this site because I wrote it, so it's
wonderful to see it become something else entirely. In
any case, my thanks to Heidy! We have something we have never seen before on the
lake. Seagull babies. I'm sure folks down on the
Coast have seen lots, but neither Andy nor I could recall
seeing anything like that here before. I wondered because
the seagulls were making quite a racket across the bay
the other day, wheeling around a place where the summer
residents have just come in. I heard the birds but never
thought much of it, I just assumed that folks over
there had been cleaning their fish in the water
and left the innards behind. But after Andy noticed the
little guys with the adults, it became pretty obvious
that they may have been the reason for all the complaining
at the intruders. We also have some baby hawks flying around
as a result of that pair I mentioned this spring that
were mating over at the neighbours. At least there's certainly
been an increase in numbers flitting over our heads every
time we walk in that direction, and some are quite small.
I nearly ran over one turning into our driveway yesterday.
He was sitting on the ground and in no hurry to move!
I can only assume he had just killed something.
It doesn't look like we're going to have very great weather
now for the next few days, and if that's the case, I suppose
I'll be stuck on the computer more. In which case, I'll
try to get back to a more regular blog.
24/07/20088:49 PM
Car Show
One
of my neighbours has sent me an email asking me to spread
the word about a car show to be held in Nimpo Lake on
August 15. I'll just quote his email: "One
of the Resort Owners (Donn Irwin of "the Dean on Nimpo)
has decided to host an impromptu Car Show Sat. Aug 15.
I've been asked to help out. Various cars from Williams
Lake, 100 Mile House and a few from Quesnel have indicated
they'll be coming. Nimpo Lake is located 200 miles West
of Williams Lake, approx. 30 miles from the infamous Bella
Coola Hill and 75 miles from Bella Coola itself.
Treat yourself to the scenic drive along Hwy 20 to Nimpo
Lake. There are 800 lakes within 50 miles of Nimpo, also
know as the "Floatplane capital of BC. I'll be showing
my Stealth R/T TT, My 440 Duster and my sc'd Viper. May
even bring out the custom 84 Turbo Daytona. I've also
been asked to provide Photo services on the Lakefront
for entrants wishing pics of their cars in this unique
setting - at the moment it's bring your own Models.
Flightseeing of our Glaciers, Rainbow Mtns, Hunlen Falls
(one of the highest waterfalls in the world), Turner Lake
& Lonesome Lake chains will also be available. The fishing
at Nimpo Lake has been fantastic this year and boats will
be available as well.
The host Resort has a Restaurant on site. Stewart's Lodge
is the home of Tweedsmeer Air Services. Wilderness Rim
is partially owned by Pioneer Log Homes (largest Log Home
builder in the world) and features a $15,000 'tree fort'
in the yard. Resorts BC and I also have a guest cabin
each (with full amentities) on the lakefront for rent.
No bottled water here as we have the healthiest water
on the Planet. Even the lake water tastes better than
plastic bottled. - Ted Hlokoff."
So
there you go! If you have a car you think worthy of a
car show, bring it on out. If you don't, come on out anyway!
It's nice that someone is taking the initiative to get
some new activities happening here. Of course this
kind of thing would not have been held here ten or twelve
years ago when we still had 60 miles of gravel to get
here, but that's progress for you!
We were blessed with another remarkable day with pure
sunshine and a lot of heat! Andy went fourwheeling with
the guys to clean up more trail today and discovered a
couple of meadows that he thinks will be awesome for doing
turns on a snowmobile this winter. That meant I had the
day to myself with chores to do but I still got to putter
around outside doing a bunch of watering and some weeding.
And since it was way too hot to walk the dogs today, I
took them out this evening. We had to move pretty fast
though because it was late enough for the bugasaurs
to start coming out in force.
I got feedback from a reader who commented on how uncomfortable
the seats are in their new vehicle as well. I won't describe
the vehicle since I didn't get permission to reprint the
comments, but it sure is nice to know that it isn't
the wild imagination of just a few of us regarding
how crippling the seats are in vehicles manufactured in
recent years. I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't someplace
a person can comment and be heard by the auto manufacturers.
After all, with the present and forecast economic climate,
competition for car buyers will become tough. Maybe they'll
smarten up and start building for the people. If
anyone knows where to complain, please let me know!
23/07/20088:55 PM
Two Beauties in a Row
It's
pretty hard to beat our weather right now. We've
actually had a couple of beautiful days in a row.
Yesterday morning there was frost on the ground but
somehow all of my plants escaped unscathed. The temperature
was supposed to drop down again last night but I don't
think it even got close to freezing. We just had too
warm a day yesterday. Today was hotter than Hades in
the sun but since I was outside most of the day, I didn't
think to check the thermometer.
I would really like to see a few more super sunny days
like what we've had. My plants sure are liking it and
the new lawn doesn't seem to mind the warmth either. And
the more hot weather we get, the more we can hope to burn
off the skeeters. Not that it's happened yet.
They're still hiding in the shady spots and aren't that
hard to find, but at least you can walk into the cool
of the garage now and not be swarmed, and a walk in the
woods isn't bad either, so they must be getting better.
I got some Thompson Water Seal on the new fence today.
Now I just need to find a protective coat to seal the
logs from the sun's rays because I don't want them to
turn gray with age. I know they talk about that nice
gray patina that cedar fades to in the hoity toity gardening
magazines, but frankly, to me it just looks old. We went out fishing for about an hour last night
but a stiff breeze blew up and the waves on Nimpo pushed
us around quite a bit because all we were using was
the electric motor. It got pretty cool and a little
uncomfortable because there's still a lot of chill coming
off that water. Still, Andy pulled in a beautiful rainbow
in the bay in front of our house just before we came
in, so at least we didn't get skunked. We probably should
have gone out a lot earlier in the evening when it was
warmer, and we could have stayed out longer.
I just got a phone call and found out that friends of
ours will not be able to come up and stay for a couple
of weeks as we have been planning for half a year. It's
really disappointing, but apparently they went on a short
200 mile trip in their newest vehicle a week ago, and
it just about killed their backs. Both are elderly but
have always traveled quite a bit by vehicle and never
had a problem before. However, they're pretty sure
that it must be the seats in the car that are causing
the problem. That doesn't surprise me. The seats
in our truck, and the truck before that kill my back.
I usually nearly fall out of the vehicle every time we
stop because I'm so seized up. We've noticed that the
seats are getting harder and harder as the vehicles get
newer, yet I can ride for thousands of miles in my old
'91 pickup and the seats are great. We were talking to
my Mother a week or so ago and she said she found
the same problem with their new truck. The late
90's truck had decent seats, the 2003 was more uncomfortable,
and their brand new truck, (all identical in make and
model) is so hard on her back that she has to stop every
hour or two or she's crippled up from riding any distance.
We've even complained to our Ford dealer because we don't
want to buy a new vehicle until we can be assured that
they've improved the quality of seats. Hasn't done much
good though. The best we can figure is that the
auto manufacturers have sourced a cheaper seat for
their vehicles and would rather save money and disregard
the comfort of their buyers.
As my friend said tonight, it would seem we're going backwards.
Indeed we are. I'm pretty sure the old Model T's were
more comfortable to ride in than our truck, modern suspension
or not!
The property I mentioned on the last blog is listed
now, so if you're interested in a place on Anahim Lake,
you can find the information on the Properties
for Sale page.
21/07/20089:29 PM
Outside Day
I've
been working on something time sensitive for a client,
but since I didn't get the information I needed this morning
I got to work outside for part of the day.
Andy and I decided we were going to take on a small fence
building project to protect part of the lawn and septic
system from people driving into the yard. Previously,
there were some very rotten old logs doing the job,
which we replaced with a couple of extra beetle killed
trees last year. The bark was still on and peeling off,
so they were nearly as ugly as their predecessors.
Every time a green tree fell over in the yard last year
after losing the windbreak from so many beetle killed
trees, Andy would cut it up into lengths and I would peel
the bark off immediately while the peeling was good. I
don't know if either of us had a set design in mind for
a fence, we just knew we needed one in that spot. I guess
I had imagined a post and pole fence which would have
required treating the bottoms of the posts, while Andy
had figured on more of a snake fence idea. We decided
to go with the latter, even though neither of us have
ever built one before, but we figured, hey, if the
old timers around here could do it, we could do it.
The only thing I'm more than familiar with building is
ranch style barbed wire and post, or for horses, smooth
wire or pole. It's taken us a few days of an hour here
and an hour there and we always seem to be doing it in
the hottest part of the day, but we've muddled through.
The end result is surprisingly spiffy looking, even if
we didn't know what we were doing. Besides, not only did
it beat being stuck on the computer on a beautiful day,
but it's just one more thing off of our humungous list
of projects to do.
This for my smart ass of a sister. I finally grew
a zucchini big enough to eat! It was kind of a
funny looking thing and I won't say what Andy suggested
it resembled, but we had it for supper and it tasted quite
fine! I finally had a male flower and female flower on
my plant at the same time again so I pollinated them with
a Q tip today in the hopes that I'll luck out and get
another zucchini. I sure would like to know why the bees
and other bugs aren't doing their jobs! Noooo, they
would rather have their noses in the flowers.
Word to the wise, if you don't have a lot of bees, don't
have a gazillion perennials flowering at the same time
as your veggies. The veggies will lose out. I have a property coming up for sale on Anahim Lake
and the one on Eagle Lake is no longer for sale. I'm not
sure if I will get the new property listed tonight or
not, and I have only two pictures, but I'll try to get
it loaded up tomorrow.....unless it's a nice day....:-)
We had some really wild winds yesterday, making it a real
challenge for some of the visiting pilots to get off the
lake or runway and head home. One split his prop but other
than that, there were no disasters. Had it not been for
the wind, it would have been a really beautiful day yesterday
too. Today was a humdinger and almost too hot for awhile.
Then the wind switched and it cooled down pretty quickly
this evening. I had to wear a couple of layers on my walk
tonight.
Andy is walking the dogs in the morning, and I try to
in the evening, both of us hoping we can wear off some
of the energy that the new pup has. Not that we're succeeding.
But I wonder if so much traffic on the trail in
the backwoods is keeping the wild animals at bay,
or if they've just moved on because it's too hot. Where
I saw deer and moose tracks before, there hasn't been
anything for a while now. With the wild strawberries and
soapberries ripening up I would have expected to see a
bear track somewhere in the dusty spots, but I haven't
seen a thing. And there's getting to be quite a few dusty
spots. Every day that we don't have dew, the ground gets
drier.
The Lower Mainland has seen next to nothing for moisture
in the month of July where 47mm is the norm and I
see that there's a fire burning near a town in the Kootenays.
I'm actually surprised that they haven't had more fires
before this because they've had hot weather for months
now. If this keeps up we should see fires breaking out
all over the province pretty soon. That'll keep my sister
busy. At least she'll have less time to comment on my
lack of zucchini.
19/07/200812:59 PM
Floatplane Meeting
You
can tell it's the BC Floatplane Association's AGM this
weekend. There's been lots of airplane traffic
in the skies and on Nimpo Lake for the last day or so.
It's a little quieter this afternoon because all of
the pilots are in the meeting and will now be listening
to the speakers. One of which is the guy from Wings
Over Canada, and the other is Charles Russel himself
of grizzly bear fame. Now he's a guy that would
be interesting to talk to! Perhaps I'll get to meet
him tonight at the supper for which I am helping to
provide some salads, so this won't be a long post.
Most of the planes are at the other end of Nimpo Lake
and of course, I forgot to send Andy with the camera,
but we've seen some interesting ones on this end as
well. There was one beauty that came in last night and
crossed in front of our place. I don't have any idea
what it was, but it was as white as snow, and was some
sort of amphib with a pontoon under it and a couple
of small ones on the wings.
We have an interesting day today. It's been trying to
rain out there all morning but hasn't really dropped a
lot of moisture on the ground. What little there
is might help with the forest fire danger though, which
may be going to high or extreme any time now.
While everything is pretty green, probably because of
the cool summer up until this past week, the woods are
super crunchy. Smoke started rolling in yesterday evening
and has pretty much obscured the mountains again and we
had a big, fat orange moon rise over the horizon last
night. Since our breeze was from the north for awhile,
maybe the Itcha Ulgatchuz fire has kicked up again.
Or maybe something has started up around the Nazko or
Blackwater area since that's such a bad area for thunderstorms
and lightning strikes.
I mentioned in the last article that the US banks and
housing market are in serious trouble as we all know,
but Canada's housing isn't so hot now either. Sales
are down all across the western provinces, but on the
news the other night it noted that housing is
down around 40% on the Lower Mainland. A far
cry from the buying craze of only a year ago that has
made it virtually impossible for first time home buyers
to get into that market anymore. Realtors down there
have made it clear that it is now a buyer's
market for the first time in this century.
I have friends in Saskatchewan that very much want to
move from Yorkton to the Kootenays (Lower southeastern
part of the province for those of you that don't live
in Canada.) but have stated that housing prices there
have skyrocketed there in the last few years. Not
long ago it was probably one of the most affordable
places to buy in BC besides in the far north,
but Albertans making good money in the oil fields have
been buying summer homes there like crazy, because property
is so expensive in Alberta. People retiring from their
jobs in the Lower Mainland have also been buying there
because the Okanagan has been too expensive for a some
time now for folks on a limited income.
My friends have a unique opportunity in that they can
sell their home in Saskatchewan for quite a bit more
than they paid for it, pay off all of their debts, and
still have a hefty sum for a down payment. For
the first time in many, many years, Saskatchewan's housing
market has been booming, but I suspect that
won't last for long. I tried to convince my friends
that they should sell now before Saskatchewan's housing
market begins to drop off as well. Go to the Kootenays,
and rent for now. I think that prices will drop there
in the near future, by a substantial amount. So this
post is actually a reminder in writing to myself that
I can check back on in a year or so and see if the following
prediction comes true.
You see, China and India may be coming online as huge
fuel consumers, because a new working class of Chinese
have been created that have suddenly been able to afford
vehicles. That's come about because of all the manufacturing
in China. And where do a lot of those goods go? North
America. So allegedly, the reason why we have such high
fuel prices is because there is such high demand in
China. If that's the case, what happens when manufacturing
plants there have to shut down or cut back employees
because there is no longer the insane consumerism in
North America that we have seen in the past decade?
If there's a recession or depression in North America,
it is going to have a global effect. If people all over
the world are forced to stop buying so much, China will
have to stop manufacturing so much.
If that happens, then I think that China's and India's
fuel consumption will drop dramatically. If demand is
down, what happens to supply? Price drop.
The oil sands in Alberta rely on high prices for fuel,
(I don't remember exactly but I think it's $90 or $110
per barrel.) for it to be economically feasible to produce
oil from the sands, since it's so much more costly than
extracting from oil wells. If there is a substantial
drop in the price of oil, then the oil sands will be
affected. That means layoffs and cutbacks and that means
a lot of summer homes in the Kootenays may go up for
sale. More supply and less demand means lower housing
prices. And I figure if my friends can wait it out,
they can purchase their dream home or bed and breakfast
in the Kootenays for an affordable price in a just a
couple of years or less. However, it is just a prediction
on my part based on a pretty convoluted way of thinking
and I hardly expect my friends to make a decision
of that magnitude on my prediction. Besides,
they're a very impulsive couple and I don't think they
have the patience to wait it out. In addition to that,
they're pretty sure that they have a couple of more
years of housing prices continuing to rise in Saskatchewan
so they don't want to sell their home too soon and risk
leaving more money on the table. I sympathize with them
since that's what happened to them when they sold their
home in Calgary, but I don't think they have another
two years of rising prices.
I hope things work out as well as they possibly can
for my friends, but I'm especially curious to see if
the Kootenays property market plays out as I have predicted.
Okay, gotta go chop food. You'll find last week's articles,
including the one about the American housing crisis at
July
Week Two .
The purpose of this web site is to draw attention to a
remote area of west central British Columbia. It is a
beautiful area that relies heavily on tourism. The search
engines don't know much about the West Chilcotin, Anahim
Lake, Nimpo Lake or any of the other small communities
in the region and I hope to change that! Even as large
as this site will eventually be, there just isn't enough
room or time in the day to fully describe this incredible
country but I am going to try scraping away at the tip
of the iceberg, so join me!
Follow
the links, and see what the West Chilcotin is really like!
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