5 August 2009

So we're back from the great summer journey that Ed, Fred and I take to Clinton BC every year.

The Store managed to acquire some very spiffy Celtic knotwork patches as well as some interesting leads on possible new items to carry.

That being said...

I can honestly say I have never seen the site we camp at every year (a horse pasture in the hills above the town of Clinton, about 1.5 hours north of Kamloops) so dry and dusty. The ground was so parched that even the grass had blown away. The moss on the mountainside, usually so moist and squishy, was brittle. The grasshoppers, normally found in great whirring clouds there, had taken off for better climes. Either that or they were all blown down the valley by the incredible wind/dust storm that hit on Saturday and couldn't make their way back up. I happened to be eating lunch when it happened. I had a gluten free bagel I had been saving with special lunch meat, cheese, gluten free mayonnaise and lettuce. I had been looking forward to this particular lunch, saved carefully in its own cooler and vehemently defended from the the others in my encampment, for days. When the wind and dust descended on us, the lettuce was ripped from my sandwich, hurled at high speed down the site...I cannot even begin to tell you some of the sailor's curses I uttered. It became a grudge match - me against Mother Nature - me huddled up against the lee wall of the tent keeping an eye out for flying tents and debris and Her flinging dust and dirt like someone had emptied a full bag from a vacuum cleaner into a wind tunnel. I managed to finish that bagel though it was covered in dust and powdered horse dung and the mayonnaise was speckled black with dirt. It was the best bagel I'd ever had in my life.

There was a fire ban for the entire time we were there. Ominous drifts of smoke kept coming over the ridge, presumably from the Lilloet fire (our thoughts and best wishes to the people there). Everyone was on high alert for any hint of fire either in the camping area or on the ridge especially after a lightning strike there during Saturday's dust storm.

Things I learned on this trip:

The town of Clinton has a library (on Tingley Street!). They give away their old magazines. If you take them and hang them on strings in the porta potties on the event site, people will actually tear pages out of them to use even though there is toilet paper available in quantity. I think it must be an editorial statement against the publishers of "Good Housekeeping". Oddly, not one of the "Mad Magazines" suffered the same fate.

Rum is substantially cheaper in British Columbia which makes me wonder just who really benefitted from Alberta's move to privatize liquor stores.

There are people in the world who carry magnets on their person at all times because they believe that if they do not, they will fall off the planet. I know this because I actually met one this weekend.

Horses will eat an amazing variety of things - whether on purpose or by accident I don't know - including bottle caps, survey tape, and plastic zip ties. I am a little nervous to report that I did find a horseshoe in one pile of dung which leads me to think that one of horses may have eaten one of the other horses. I want to point out that I really don't know much about horses but after seeing that, I kept a wary eye on all of them...

Fred goes completely berserk when he hears a horse whinney and actually stampeded one of them right off the site before we could stop him. He also refuses to tolerate people yelling (much to the chagrin of the people whose job it was to herald the news on site), people running, and little kids bopping each other with foam swords. He got very, very grumbly during the actual "war" part of the weekend when people were in armour bashing each other with rattan swords to the point where he had to have a doggy "time out" in his cube. I really do think he's relieved to be at home, even in spite of the fact that he has to put up with two evil cats there.

Other things I learned:

There is an apparently bottomless lake 18 km from the town of Clinton (Kelly Lake, part of Downing Provincial Park). The locals say it was formed when a giant meteor hit there and then the hole filled with spring water. The water is crystal clear and ten paces from the shore you cannot see the bottom. The edges have been sonared but so far as I could tell, nobody has ever figured out how deep it actually is.

When Fred swims, he does not move his legs as though he were walking (as I always thought) but instead strokes with the right side, then left, then right. I have it on film. The underwater view of Fred swimming is quite hilarious.

It is very hard to get a steady camera angle whilst treading water in an apparently bottomless lake.

And lastly, learned on Monday night from an older couple camped in an RV at the place we stopped at on the way home, about that windstom that cut a swath west of Edmonton on the weekend. Our hearts go out to the people who were at the Big Valley Jamboree.