which is about 2 hours north of us. When we were house hunting we were actually considering moving that far north but now of course I’m glad we didn’t since I’ve become pretty fond of Merritt.
Barriere and the surrounding area suffered a massive forest fire in 2003 which really hurt the community since the fire took out one of the major employers- the Lois Creek sawmill.
There are ragged patches of mountain all around with blackened toothpick trees still standing but it doesn’t look that bad. The whole area is situated at the confluence of the North Thompson and Barriere Rivers and doesn’t have what I would call a really thick forest to start with- mostly needle type trees that don’t grow densely packed together.
I was expecting the area to look a lot worse. We had a nice lunch at a café ( just north of the A&W- can’t remember the name ) and then just cruised around the area. On our way back we stopped at a few pullouts to take pictures and at McClure we took a ferry over the river to drive back to Kamloops on Westsyde road which would allow us to be closer to the water and have better light for photography.
The ferry is one of those little ones that hold 2 cars or one truck and trailer and is pulled along a cable. Cute!
While it’s still pretty rustic in these parts Westsyde road is paved all the way south to Kamloops – I asked beforehand because at this time of the year the roads get nasty and dangerous and not worth going on if they’re logging roads.
Oh, before I forget- I saw something really stupid. At one of the pullouts ( Fishtrap Rest Area ) there was one of those typical tourist information signs- all nicely set up under a wooden structure except for the fact that the map of the area was placed sideways on the panel. Not only was it placed sideways it was DESIGNED SIDEWAYS AND RIGHT SIDE UP!
I couldn’t believe it. The text was normal but north was facing west. The “N” was a “Z”! It was almost as if someone thought that Barriere didn’t rate to have it’s town properly displayed because it didn’t suit the panel’s horizontal format. Barriere is laid out north to south not east to west.
To make it worse, the sign is physically set so that North, which points West, is actually angled to the south/south-west.
The person walking behind the sign is walking north, in the direction of Barriere to make it simple. This just chokes me. :(
Anyways, the drive back was quite lovely with a constant view of the N. Thompson river and big and little hobby farms scattered throughout.
Closer to Kamloops there was actually a cornfield- the first I’ve seen in that area – they grow mostly alfalfa out here. And then the deer. Unbelievable. I counted 22 of them while my husband and I were taking pictures. They were all fat and rather placidly filling their stomachs on the green grass. I wanted to take a picture with my husband’s camera, which has a really long zoom, which I was able to prop up on the rolled down window just in time to catch 2 bucks mock fighting. That was quite something as I’ve only seen that behavior in videos.
So that was how we spent today. :)
Bigger at DA :)
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