OK Falls BC to Spences Bridge BC

Evening at the Acacia Grove campsite in Spences Bridge

 Donna sent us on our way about 9am, after "forcing" us to have a steak and egg breakfast to get us off to a good start. A nice bright day.

Last evening there was some more Bighorn sheep action after yesterday's blog was published:

A couple of large rams started to cross the back yard...

"Big Bad" Sergie put a stop to that

The rams decided to beat a retreat temporarily

 

Their consolation was chowing down on the Mock Orange blossoms next door

 

It was a beautiful morning for a drive through orchard and vineyard country, in spite of the damages caused to some species by the cold weather this past winter:

 

 

 At other times it was just a real pretty drive with lots of hills and curves:

Lots of traces of rockslide activity down this large hill

And lots of scree at the base of this hill

 Along the way on an unscheduled side trip (a road we shouldn't have taken) we saw a nice new garage, with a door likely high enough for the van:

Looks like you'd have to take down the fence before using though...

 

After driving a couple of hours we came across a nice picnic area. Turns out we had stopped at the same spot on our way through here in 2022. A good stop on a much nicer day than we had 2 years ago:

These folks were folding up their inflatable boards

 Can't say we weren't warned:

It didn't look like they were going to share the road

But they gave way in the end

We saw lots of fire damage from past years. There have been no fires or smoke near us this trip though (touching wood). These were along the way from Merritt to Spences Bridge:

Those little white specks in the field in the above 2 pictures turned out to be full size round hay bales, wrapped in plastic and standing on end. They were a long ways down from the road. I'd bet those farms saw some smoke.

 

In a Reserve area we saw a couple of interesting things:

Horses hanging out (loose) at the Fire Hall. Guess they feel safer there.

A rare Yeti sighting out in the open. He didn't bother with us though.

 

"Big" seems to be a theme around here (Bighorn, Bigfoot)

 

Just an amazing variety to the landscapes. That's why this was an all-day drive for us, in spite of Google's estimates:

A huge variety of sculpted hills

Can you "get" the scale of these large rocks? We couldn't tell where they came from.

Around 3:30 we decided to find a place to camp. We investigated a free site in Spences Bridge. It was a bit too close to the train tracks for us though:

See the train going by on the other side of the river? and the camper over there?

Just to the left of the previous picture, the northbound trains also blow their whistle for the level crossing

 We're camped at the Acacia Grove park just across the river from the free camping. We no sooner got checked in here though, than we discovered there are tracks for southbound trains on this side too, right behind our site:

The tops of train cars going by

The rails just behind our site

 

No crossings to whistle at on this side though, and with the trains so much lower than us, the noise doesn't really bother us.

Looking across the tracks and the Thompson River from our site

Time for a rare pipe