Mountain Pine beetle

We left Chilliwack Weds morning heading for Whispering Pines at Mara Lake. Along the way we stopped in Kelowna to have lunch with Bryan St. George. On our first trip to Mexico the first travelling Canadian we met was Dick Merrick from Comox. He appeared out of nowhere as we were checking into our favorite spot in Alamos, Dolisa Motel & RV Park. After introductions he said he'd be back once we got settled in.

After we got set up I went looking for Dick and found him talking to a guy who turned out to be Bryan. Bryan's face was all scratched up and he looked like he had road rash on his forehead so naturally I asked what had happened. Dick and Olive had this big semi-out-of-control Golden Retriever "Trini" who travelled everywhere with them. Dick and Bryan had been visiting and Bryan had absent mindedly thrown Trini's ball, not realizing that Trini had wrapped his long lead around Bryan's feet. Bryan lost a pair of glasses and made one hell of a mess of his face but he took it in stride.

We have stayed in touch with both the St. Georges and the Merricks ever since that first visit. One memorable trip we ran into Bryan and Dean in Alamos where they had picked up 3 Irish girls who were hitching their way around Mexico. The girls ended up riding in the back of Bryan's Dakota pickup all the way to our next stop in Guasave. We offered to let a couple of them ride with us and the third one could have travelled with our friends the Coneys but the girls felt safer together, even if together meant together in the back of a micro-truck towing a fifth wheel trailer.

When we bought the bus it was located in Kelowna, which is where Bryan and Dean lived so naturally they were involved in the sale and our subsequent trip to pick it up. We bought the bus without ever seeing it but before Bryan would let me even think about driving it home he went out to the Roberts' orchard and pulled an oil sample which he shipped off to his favorite oil lab in Calgary. Bryan's business was a moving and storage company and he used 8-92s in his trucks so he was my source for information as I learned about my new toy. When we flew to Kelowna to pick up the bus naturally Bryan picked us up at the airport and we spent the night at their place. When Bryan & I actually picked the bus up I thought we had agreed that he would be driving it back to their place but at the last minute he said "you'll be OK - stop if you get in trouble". Yeah right. Stop a 40 foot bus in Kelowna traffic. What could possibly go wrong with that plan? To cap it all off Bryan and Dean lived at the top of this narrow lane in the swankiest neighbourhood of Kelowna so I got to back the bus that I had driven for all of half an hour up the hill around a corner on a 10 foot driveway.

Bryan lost Dean to a heart attack about 3 weeks ago now. I went up to Kelowna for the funeral but Marilyn was at McLean Lake. I think it is important to visit people after the funeral. Too often people make a big fuss over the bereaved ones the week of the funeral and then forget about them. So we wanted to stop in to see Bryan after the hustle bustle of family and friends had settled down a bit. Then we carried on up to Mara and spent the night with our Whispering Pines family.

Along the way I took these photos of Pine Beetle damage. Its no wonder BC is burning this summer but I have to think the worst is yet to come. You can drive for 10s of miles and all you see is vast swaths of dead trees. One of the camphosts at Whispering Pines claimed that the southern part of the province is good compared with the central areas around Quesnel. If that is true then it is only a matter of time until there are uncontrollable wildfires. If you have ever thrown a dry pine branch on a fire you know that it literally explodes into flame. Imagine a valley filled with not just branches but whole trees like that.