Spending a Sunday in and Around Harrison River Valley

ALL THE PICTURES INCLUDING A VIDEO CAN BE SEEN HERE

Aunty Diane and myself picked up the three junior woodchucks for a fun filled day of "exploring with Grampa"

First up was Weaver Creek Spawning Channel in the Harrison River Valley east of Mission BC.

Unfortunately we were in between salmon runs for this facility, so we drove a few miles down valley and stopped at the Chehalis River Fish Hatchery

Here we seen some Chinook salmon but mostly Chum salmon trying to gain access to the hatchery channels. We also looked around the hatchery and found a batch of fry in one of the rearing containers.

From the hatchery we drove a couple of miles up the Harrison West Forest Service Road to the location of an artesian well. Actually, it is the outlet of a pipe run from the neighbour's property on the hill above the road.

Being a good neighbour, the property owner installed a pipe down the hill to roadside for his fellow neighbour's and even built a rock faced Buddha shrine to highlight the water pipe outlet.

After this it was time for lunch, so we drove into Agassiz and had a great lunch at the Broken Whisk. The kids were happy about their burgers and chicken strips. Adalyn thought they were the best chicken strips she ever had, Rowan was extremely happy about his cheese burger and fries, while Camden thought his burger was pretty good but Wendy's was still better. All agreed the strawberry ice cream for dessert was fantastic.

After lunch I showed Diane Scofield a good thrift store built in the back parking lot of a church in Agassiz. Unfortunately the store was closed on Sundays but Camden and Rowan had fun playing chess on the large outdoor chess board.

From there we headed to visit the train museum but alas it was Sunday and the museum was closed as well, but we still took a few minutes to look around the rail car and the caboose on display.

Our last stop of the day was the Kilby Museum on the Harrison River close to the Lougheed Highway.

The Kilby Museum is housed inside of a large three story house with the 1906 general store on the main floor, and various boarding rooms on the top floor. The ground floor was the workshop for the farm which was also on this sight back in the day.

The building itself is up on 30 foot stilts to get above the spring floods which happened every year in the Fraser Valley until extensive diking took place in later years.

After touring the general store and surrounding farm, we began making our way home as the day was coming to an end.

Grampa took the kids on a few backroads they had not been on before, and we did a bit of bird watching in the back sloughs of the Fraser River.

We spotted many Bald Eagles of course; also present were American Coots, American Dippers, Common Mergansers, Mallard Ducks, Double Breasted Cormorants and others that were a bit too far away to accurately identify without binoculars.

It was a fun way to spend a few hours with the grand kids in between the rainy days of Fall. Grampa got to show them a bunch of new locations and sights, and Aunty Diane even got to see some new sights and sounds as well.