Lac le Juene

The old saying “you can never go back” was surely true when we got to Lac le Jeune!  The grassy area with tall pine trees by the lake where you could sit and watch the boats with fishermen and hear the call of the loons was replaced by a parking lot, very few trees and no boats on the lake!  There has been a terrible outbreak of the pine bark beetle in the trees up here and the British Columbia government chose the opposite solution as they have in Montana and cut down all the infected trees.  The trees of other species are left but it is a very different look than the thick forest I remember from when we were here with the Guymon family 42 years ago- the summer we got married.  The lake is still beautiful and the call of the loons still one of the true sounds of the wild - like elk bugling in the fall.

The weather was VERY COLD and mostly cloudy while we were there but we still enjoyed ourselves.  The first evening we were walking back to our trailer from viewing the lake and some folks from Kamloops invited us to join them at their campfire.  He reminded us of Bob Strawn!  He had worked for BC power all over central and northern British Columbia.  We shared stories about lots of topics including the difference between what the U.S. and Canadian governments did for retired people.  It was very enjoyable but we finally had to excuse ourselves about 2 hours later at almost 10 pm to return to our trailer.  It was still light but I was about an icicle and we had not even eaten dinner before our walk around the campground.  They were super nice and gave us lots of brochures and maps about the places we were headed.  Jasper is his favorite park so he had local knowledge of all the best spots not to miss.

During the day we dove into Kamloops but did not end up going to a wild life center because when we checked it out it was more of a zoo that what we had expected. We spent the cold dreary afternoon at McDonalds using their wi-fi and updating the blogs and e-mails.  Everything along the food line seems more expensive here and very high taxes.  I guess that would be expected with subsidized medicine for all like they have. Canada has a dull gold colored $1 coin they call a “loony” because they have a loon on them.  They also have $2 coin that has circle of the dull gold around a nickel looking   center called a “twony”.  It always seems like they don’t give you enough change when you look at the paper but then you remember some of the coins in your hand are dollars.  Half a gallon of milk was $3.25 with an additional 25 cent refundable deposit if you take the plastic bottle back to some bottle drop off – not the store where you bought it AND another added 7 cents for conservation fee.  So we ration our milk to cereal in the morning.  Some of your families might have to consider switching to powdered at these prices.  Diesel is $1.22 per litre (Canadian for liter) or about $4.88 for a little more than a gallon.  But one place we only paid $1.05 per litre so that was cheaper than home that time.  The interesting thing is not all stations have diesel so we have to make sure we keep the tank topped off so we do not have to have Good Sam come & rescue us.

The second evening we were at Lac le Juene we followed the advice of a local guy Dad schmoozed into telling us where to look to photograph wildlife and went mudding up some logging roads.  Actually the roads were 10 times better than any of the forest service roads in Cache County but then they take those big trucks up in there to haul the logs out. We only saw a couple of groups of deer but we saw some clear cut logging operations that just might turn you into a conservationist tree hugger after seeing the mess and waste they leave. 

The truck got so dirty with mud everywhere even inside where you open the doors Dad had to take it to a coin (good use for all those loonies) operated car wash the next day so we did not look like red necks.

We are having an amazingly wonderful time but when we see grandmas & grandpas traveling with their kids and grandkids we miss you all.  Hope everyone is doing well and answer your phones if we call in the next day or two. I bought a phone card that I can use at a pay phone – which seem to be eveywhere and it only costs 4 cents a minute to talk.