VICTORIA TO ABBOTSFORD

So when I was still at Sooke and enjoying the Roadents mini-reunion, my old buddy John asked me if I might join him and his lovely bride at their home in Victoria the next day.  I have hardly seen John at all since 1975, and only met Christine at the reunion, so this sounded like a very fine idea indeed.  They had some other plans that would occupy them until about 3 pm on Sunday, but if I could find their home after that, I would be welcome.  PERFECT!

And it came to pass that Scott and Anne-Marie left Sooke on Sunday morning to go to the Royal Colwood Golf Course for a mixed golf derby, leaving me at their home in Sooke with RELIABLE INTERNET, which is fast becoming the barometer of how much I enjoy a location...........and it seems to me that I probably wrote and published a blog entry there, but which one that might have been is something of a mystery...........says he with not a seque in sight as to what I am writing about right now.  But I did leave Sooke under rainy skies, and made my way down-island to Esquimalt, where Bitching Betsy found John and Christine’s home without a problem.

Christine is originally from Germany, she has a brother who lives in Kingston, and after a couple glasses of wine I think I have convinced her to bring John to K-town for the 2017 reunion, yeehaw!!!  We had a delightful supper together, I had a GOOD sleep in the camper, and the next morning enjoyed a quick coffee before I headed to the ferry, via a back way that John told me about.  And for once, the shortcut actually worked out, HOORAY!!!!  But I stopped for a yellow light while several dozen vehicles came in from a side road, headed to the same ferry, and I was wondering if I would indeed make the 9 am ferry.  Then I chose the absolute WORST lane to line up for the ferry, with each of the people ahead of me taking minutes to pay their fare.  The vehicle in front of me was probably stopped for five full minutes while every other line was allowing oversize vehicles like mine to join the SHORT oversize vehicle lanes.  I was pretty much ready to go and slit his throat and push his van into the sea when finally he moved forward.  I paid my ticket and was told that I should “PROBABLY” be OK for the 0900 ferry.  With murder in my heart I joined line 2 of 2, swearing that I would never stop for a yellow light again, would try better to pick a line-up that looked like the vehicle drivers might speak English, and wonder of wonders, our line was allowed to board, Praise The Lord!!!

It was another routine crossing except for the Asian family outside against the railing a few feet from where I had made my perch, and the little girl kept climbing up to almost the top of the railing and trying to pitch herself up to see what was over the top. The answer, to what was over the top, was certain death by drowning, but her mother seemed unaware of this calamity in the making and I couldn’t stand it any more and went back inside.  In due course we disembarked at Tsawassen and I headed to Mordor aka Vancouver at some speed.

Amongst the friends I have in Vancouver are Keith and Sonia, who have been through something of a rocky patch for a while and I wanted to see them and take them out for lunch.  Another buddy Neil is somewhere in that same city, and so we made plans to get together for lunch, which in spite of Vancouver traffic, non-functional apartment building intercoms, and a few other obstacles, actually happened.  Keith, Sonia, Neil and I had lunch at the Thirsty Duck, corner of 6^th Ave and 12^th Street in New Westminster, swapped lies for a bit, and then I was back in the rig, desperately trying to beat the Vancouver rush hour out of town.  Wonder of wonders, I DID beat most of the traffic, and made it to Abbotsford, where I met Kevan and Linda, him being Kevan from Gun Nutz, with whom I have had many deals and always wanted to meet.

Back in Winterpeg, when I bought a spare magazine for my Tikka T3, that being my big-game rifle for this extended safari, I found out that I had loaded the bullets in my ammo a hair too long to feed properly from the magazine.  I had figured that Kevan would have the dies and press that would allow me to rectify my error, and indeed this was the case.  My ammo for the next two hunts is now short enough to fit and feed reliably in both magazines. 

That evening we went out to the Highwayman Pub in Abbotsford, and if ever you find yourself in the Lower Mainland, I would strongly suggest you take a meal there.  The food was excellent, with generous portions, service was absolutely top-notch, and the prices were very reasonable indeed.  In other words, just what this itinerant hopes to find in a restaurant!

Kevan and Linda live very close to the Trans-Canada Highway, and the traffic was pretty noisy for this fellow’s sleeping preferences, and it was something of a tough night until I decided that some chemical enhancement, and a pair of ear plugs, would help.  They did.

The next day we spent kicking around Abbotsford and area, and went out to see a local gun smith, who had two of Kevan’s rifles for some work and who fixed an ejection problem on a third rifle while we visited.  The smith had an interesting shop, and he also restores vintage vehicles.  We then returned to Kevan’s shop.  And him being a firearms enthusiast, we swapped stories and opinions about various rifles and chambering, and I fondled a number of lovely rifles, some of them chambered for serious big game, and big pain.  As my friend Burt at home would say, they kill on both ends.  There was a .404 Jeffrey, a .450/.348 Ackley Improved, a large calibre Gibbs (.410 maybe, I forget), a black powder .45/120 that weighed about fifteen pounds, and some other interesting pieces.  I am not certain that I would be in a hurry to shoot some of them, however......

Kevan and Linda are nature lovers, and their pets are a dog named Oliver and five or six cockatiels that fly around the house.  Most of the birds were quite wary about this stranger, but one did eventually land on my shoulder long enough for Kevan to take a picture. 

 


 

I had actually remembered to take some pictures while I was there!  And they feed ducks and other critters, some not by design, in their back yard, including some stellar jays that take whole peanuts and hide them in various spots around the neighbourhood.  Some critter evidently found my engine to be quite a fine place for a stash, as I would later find out, but did not notice when I checked my oil before my departure.

So it has been many years since I stopped at Hell's Gate and thought I should do so again this trip.  When I pulled off the highway, I smelled wood smoke.  "Must be somebody with a campfire or something," thinks I, and stepped out of the cab on the upwind side.  No smoke smell, hmmmm.  Oh my goodness, there is white smoke coming out from under my hood..............YIKES!!!!  Yes indeed something was smouldering away on top of the engine, not quite bursting into flame (at that point), but given that a diesel engine that has just toiled up to Hell's Gate is not exactly at room temperature, I was in no hurry to investigate too closely.  I did get out one of my camp chairs to stand on, and peered cautiously into the maze of wires and widgets that make my truck work - none of which I have the faintest idea as to its purpose or anything else.  I blew some ashes off my engine, and there was no sign of imminent ignition, which of course would be a VERY BAD THING if my truck caught on fire because some rodent or bird had built its winter food cache thereon.  I had no way of knowing if anything had burned, melted, or otherwise failed because of the conflagration, but decided that since I had no idea what to do, I would do nothing.

My target that morning, on departing Abbotsford, was to get to Pemberton by way of Lillooet.  It is shorter to go via Vancouver and Whistler, but I did not want any more Vancouver traffic, thanks very much......................so off I went.  I got to Lytton, where the opposite shore of the Thompson River was on fire.  Quite a good-sized patch of forest was burning out of control, with very strong winds pushing it north, in the direction I was headed.  Unlike the hundreds of folks pulled off along the highway watching the fire, I was in no hurry to hang around and get cut off if the fire jumped the river.  With memories of our Great Slave Lake trip still quite vivid (forest fires everywhere one would look, including spots very close to our camp sites!), I got the heck out of Dodge.

I had examined a paper map before I undertook this portion of the trip, and saw that one could get to Lillooet by a direct secondary road from Lytton, or via primary highways by means of a significant detour via Kamloops.  The GPS decided I should proceed via the direct route.

If ever you wish to travel from Lytton to Lillooet, I suggest you fly.  Or if you are in a vehicle other than a motorcycle or sports car, take the primary highway route.  The direct route was white knuckle all the way, wash-outs and slide areas quite common, pot-holes that could swallow a bus, no shoulders, and dizzying drops off the sides of the road if one averted one’s gaze for a split second.  Oh yes, and the one-lane blind switch-back through a slide area where you had no way of knowing if somebody was coming the opposite way.  By the time I finally got to Lillooet, where I was greeted on the way into town by a Rocky Mountain Big-Horn ram, I was POOCHED.