B.C. Geocaching Road Trip - Part 2

The long awaited part 2 of the write up of our late summer geocaching road trip to Merritt - Kamloops - Vernon.

Click on any of the pictures to see the full size version

Day 3 we awoke in Kamloops and cached in the city for a while as we picked off a few in the south part of the city near our hotel. Eventually we headed north towards the Thompson River area and then east as we followed the river out of town towards our next destination of Vernon.

We have cached several time sin Kamloops and I have many photos and enough video already so I opted to not repeat material from past posts and instead will pick up the storytelling in Westwold.

Westwold is a small community on Highway 97 as you run south from Kamloops down to Vernon.
Our first memorable geocache was located at a business named Wildrides Hotrods. It is a combination garage/car servicing and restoration business, as well as having some old cars and trucks out front to entice folks to stop by for a view and a bite to eat from the small cafe the have on site.

We got to have a look around at the old cars and find a cache at the same time, not a bad two for one stop on the road.

We cached our way steadily south through small communities with the highlight of Falkland being the "big" city on this highway. I had planned a route that was heavy in Kamloops and lighter on the road so we could make time as we headed to Vernon to visit another brother and his wife As the day wore on we realized that we had to stop caching and start making time if we were to keep our "dinner" date with Wayne and Inga so we put aside the GPS and put the pedal down so we could spend some time visiting family.

Day 4 and the last day of the road trip we spent the morning caching in urban Vernon enjoying the downtown core on an early Sunday morning before the crowds woke up.
This gave us the opportunity to see some of the murals in the core area representing the history of Vernon. Transportation seemed to be the theme with multiple murals depicting some sort of travel method.

Seems like where ever you are in Vernon you are not far from a lake...whether it be Okanagan Lake or Woods Lake or Kalamalka Lake one of them is always in your view.

As we headed south out of Vernon back down towards home on the Coast we opted to take the scenic route and cached along a back road named Commonage Road that straddled the high ground between the big waters of Okanagan Lake and some of the smaller lakes.

Here you see a good division of work between brothers...sorta like the well oiled caching machine we are. MrTJ works on some potato chips, tjguy98 runs the video camera, and Bowser98 does the work of finding the cache and signing the log book. Works like a charm!  :)

  
Further south you are back on the shores of Okanagan Lake in aptly named
"Lake Country". This is one of those areas where every driveway has a boat and/or seadoos to go with it. A truck to tow the boat is the typical family wheels, no travel trailers or RVs to be seen here.

Lake views and cool breezes from the lakes are the normal experience when you are in Lake Country. We were a bit late in the year for the crowds but a few die hards were still out enjoying the last days of an Indian Summer before they had to put the boats away for the winter.

Into Kelowna we sailed picking up a roadside cache here and there as we continued our return trip home. One of the caches we stopped for was in West Bank at Paynter's Fruit Market where a local farming enterprise had a large market-type operation that was obviously well appreciated by the local residents. Many types of fruit and vegetables were sold outside  and inside many locally produced food items were available...tempting enough that we grabbed a few items off the shelf for the long lonely drive home.

But I digress...we were here on a mission to find a geocache and the old tractor on display made a convenient location to place a magnetic cache box hidden from muggles but a quick find for cachers.

On our last leg of our journey we headed along the Coquihalla Connector, which joins West Bank to Merritt, picking up new caches since our last run down the highway. We were now in "make-up-time" mode as we grabbed a few caches right off the on ramps/off ramps of the highway never straying far from the main thorough fare.

The last three caches were all along the same short spur road, which was actually part of the old Highway 5A. A yellow middle line on the pavement and an old brake check sign told us we were standing on an outdated piece of motor car history.

The very last cache we found was jsut east of Merritt on the long downhill stretch into Merritt . Some joker has left an old toilet as if they came here to use the open air facilities while enjoying a magnificent view of the Nicola Valley with Merritt as it's centre piece.

This was also the place where, after 4 days of crashing through bush and scrambling up and down hill sides, MrTJ decided to gash his leg open on the old potty...ewwwww....

Watch the video and you will see that MrTJ, trooper that he is, found the cache first and then tended to the gash on his leg. Bowser98 and myself  had the same geocaching dedication so we signed the log book and then tucked the cache back away in it's hiding place before we went back to the truck to render first aid to MrTJ.

This was the last cache of the day, the last cache of the 4 day road trip through the Interior of BC, and my very last video shot of the trip.
The sun came out from under a dark cloud and bathed Merritt in a blast of sunlight. The scene was so pretty I expected to hear angels singing.

I realized the video shoot was something I couldn't top so I put the camera away and we jumped into the truck to make a run for the Coast and back to our home sweet homes.

Four days on the road netted us 160 caches, a visit with a brother and his wife, and a load of new memories for the memory banks. A pretty satisfying road trip for the Jeep Brothers once again.

Watch the video below by clicking on it or by visiting my YouTube page here.

B.C. Geocaching Road Trip - Part 1

As the year wound down myself and brother Al and brother Ken did our yearly geocaching road trip to the Interior of the BC province. We usually head up through Merritt, Kamloops, loop over to Vernon, and then decide which route to take home depending on how many days we are away and where we end up on the second to last day of the trip. This year we more or less stuck to tradition and did the route described above. One of the good thing about looping through Vernon is then we get to visit one of our other brothers Wayne and his wife Inga.

The first day we cached our way from Maple Ridge up through the Coquihalla Highway famed for the TV show "Highway Through Hell" so named as the winter pass received huge amounts of snow making this main provincial artery one of the hardest and most dangerous roads to travel. We were travelling in early Autumn so the weather was good but high volumes, high speed, and wild life combine to make this highway dangerous any time of the year

We got off and on at various exits along the highway as we picked up caches in tucked away spots with sign markers that highlighted this main route of today and yesteryear. From cattle drives before the railway to the coming of the mountain railway itself this route through the mountains was full of history.

One of the geocaches had us scrambling up the side of a loose shale hillside to get to the top of a bluff where the geocache was hidden. While the two brothers risked their life slipping and sliding up the hillside (can't wait till they come down) I stayed below and recorded it all on video in case something terrible happened and I should need to post the video to YouTube.I immediately realized I had the wrong attitude about them hurting themselves up there.....here I was down on level ground, there they were up in a dangerous spot and I thought to myself.....those buggers have both the keys to the truck!

A few more caches along the way and soon enough we were in the big town of Merritt. We checked in at the motel to confirm our room for the night, then headed off to cache around the city for the rest of the day. We cached for a few more hours into the dark and then headed off to the local Tim Hortons for a late lunch/dinner combined before we meandered back to the hotel for the night.

DAY 1 - 12 caches and a couple of hundred miles under our belts...

.Day 2 had us up early and finishing off the local caches in Merritt before we headed north-east out of town. The first cache was only a couple of blocks away from our hotel - it was close enough that MrTJ was still eating his breakfast banana as Bowser98 and myself found the cache just a ways in from the road. Banana finished and the rest of the local caches found, we headed out of town along Highway 5A into the the north end of the Nicola Valley and alongside Nicola Lake.

We approached the southern end of Nicola Lake where it the lake ends in a marshy drainage area that is a home for a myriad of water fowl. Many species of birds overwinter here - in the past I have seen huge rafts of various types of birds from American Coots to Common Mergansers and everything in between. As it was still only September and Winter was not any where near yet, summer songbirds like the Red Winged Blackbird could be heard singing their daily songs.

We picked up caches along the east side of Nicola Lake as we slowly sauntered north towards our goal of Kamloops for the night. Along the way we were reminded that this is Cowboy country and not that long ago in the scheme of things wagon trains and stagecoaches were the transportation choices rather than cars with rubber wheels.

The Quilchena Hotel built in 1908 in the small settlement of Quilchena replaced an earlier hotel that was not up to the standards of Joseph Guichon when he purchased the property. The Guichon name is synonymous with the "history" of the region and you will find the Guichon name in many historical and present day contexts.

One of the geocaches we found,located in the hills above the Quilchena Hotel and ranch land, was part of the Gold Rush series of caches hosted by the a number of towns in this area of the province. They were designed to highlight the history of the various regions and at the same time act as a centre piece to attract tourism to the towns whose local economies have suffered as the logging and resource industries have died down. This has been a very successful campaign over the years and I know of many geocachers whom have spent their holidays in the area. Including us!  :)

We eventually left the Nicola Lake area as we continued north along Hwy 5A coming across numerous lakes situated in a north-south axis where Ice Age glaciers had carved grooves in the land. Stump Lake is one of the bigger lakes in the area and like most of the lakes had a major ranch operation on it's banks. The Stump Lake Cattle Ranh was established in 1883 and today boasts of 80,00 acres of land which ranges from rolling grasslands to evergreen and deciduous forests to lakes, wetland marshes, and high rocky bluffs.

As we were getting close to Kamloops we decided to take off onto one of the numerous ranch roads in the area to take the slow way into the big city and at the same time let us slow down and see more of the ranch life. Campbell Creek Road has a series of 25 or so caches along it's length and would drop us out on the east side of Kamloops.

So, what we would you expect to see along a road that cuts through ranch land? Why, cows of course...and we seen a lot of them along this road. The road itself was dirt but well traveled so that even cars were common along here. Not that we seen a lot of traffic...we did see a lot of cows....I think I mentioned that....there were a lot of cows.....

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One of my favourite things to explore is backroads and this road fit right into what I love to explore.But like all goods things, soon enough we were at the end of Campbell Creek Road and back into civilization.
We hunted up a few more caches in the outskirts of Kamloops and then headed into town to claim our hotel room,grab a bite to eat, and then finish the night off with a half dozen caches done in the dark.

DAY Two over - another hundred or so miles and 63 more geocaches found on the day.

End of Part 1 - watch for Part 2 to come soon.....watch the video below covering Day One and Day Two....

Merritt Day Tripping One More Time

Late in the season and time for one more solo run up to the Merritt BC area to poke around on a few side roads while doing some geocaching - cloudy skies and cool temperatures hold promise of little to no traffic on the country roads I wanted to visit....that means I don't have to share my day with anyone.  :)

The days are getting shorter this time of year which really cuts down on my day tripping hours for these long runs away from the Coast. There is so much to explore and discover in our great province that there does not seem to be enough days in the year, let alone weekends, so I tend to covet any daylight hours I can get.

So, with that in mind, I cast off from Maple Ridge almost early in the day and pointed the iconic 7 slot grille (every Jeep model ever made has the 7 slot grille) towards Hope and the Coquihalla Highway..destination...Merritt BC

The Jeep likes to cruise around 100K per hour: the 4 cylinder and low gearing that is great when it comes to off-roading, is not so great on the highway. I have to admit, it's an odd feeling being the slowest vehicle on the highway, even the semis were passing me. Not to worry, it's not a race and think of the great gas mileage I was getting.

In due time I arrived at Merritt and crossed the valley bottom over to the service part of town and filled up the Jeep so I would have a full tank to putter with on the back roads.

First leg of today's journey was Douglas Lake Road and a geocache at the historic Quilchena Cattle Company Home Ranch.The ranch is still owned by a Guichon descendant, a grandson of Joseph Guichon, one of the founders of the parent Guichon Ranch. This cache is part of a Gold Country Poker Run series done in 2013 for a fun event that had participants exploring every corner of the region. I would find a few of these today and put a few more on my to-do list.

Next fun stop was along Lauder Road at Charles Beak cabin; Charles Beak was one of the founders of the famous Douglas Lake Ranch in the late 1800s. Love these pieces of history that have been allowed to stand for later generations to view. It gives the area much more character and all the more reason to visit. Video taken and geocache signed, I jumped back in the Jeep to continue up the country dirt road driving at a contented pace as I enjoyed the scenery and the stillness of the ranch land.

 Cabins seem to be the theme of the day as the next geocache highlighted Lauder Ranch and the cabin built by Joseph Dixon Lauder in 1877. Lauder first bought cattle from his neighbour Charles Beak and started the ranch, known first as Spring Bank Ranch, later to be known as the Lauder Ranch.

I lingered at the view point overlooking the cabin and the ranch land, in no hurry to move on.This was the part of the day I was really looking forward to, the time when I could piss away the day doing what ever I wanted to......stopping for video or pictures with the camera where ever I wanted to, for as long as I wanted to...no one saying "let's go".

Seems like I would only get a mile further down the road before I pulled over to enjoy the country through my eyes and the camcorder's eyes...what good is seeing this beautiful country if you can't show it to some one else? Maybe get them excited as well, bring them back on a return visit and spread the joy !  :)

At this point I turned around and re-traced my steps back down Lauder Road towards Douglas Lake Road all the way back to Highway 5A, and then turned south back towards the end of Nicola Lake. A right turn at lake's end had me on the west side of the lake on Monck Park Road. I didn't have time to get all the caches along here...some I had found previously but there were new ones to get and sadly not enough day light hours for this road today. I picked up a couple of caches, one of which treated me to a view across the lake of the Nicola Lake Ranch. This ranch, like others visited today, were the big ranches of the day that supplied most of the cattle for BC and even the railroad workers as they laid the iron rails across our country.

I re-traced my steps back into the town of Merritt and picked up a road heading south out of the city named Midday Road. I'm sure there is a story to the name of this road but I couldn't find what it was before I started my trip on this day. Midday Road travels on the west side of the Coldwater Valley, it actually parallels the Coquihalla Highway south towards Vancouver, as well as the Coldwater Road on the east side of the river. The difference being Midday Road is more of a logging road and skirts high above the valley as it heads up into the pine country.

 
Currently I am the keeper of the Keelong Panda Bear Travel Bug which is a keep-away from it's true owner Dustanne, a Lower Mainland cacher. The whole idea is to keep it away from her possession; she loves Panda Bears so her husband Teskelly thought it would be fun to tease her by letting her see it at caching events but at a safe distance, and read his reports on his travel adventures as he geocached with other cachers.
Keelong has been to quite a few places with me, today being his his third visit to Merritt.

Midday Road slowly gains in elevation as it takes you into the high ranch area but, as would be a common refrain today, I only had enough time to go a few miles down this road for a look-see before I had to turn around as the day was getting short on daylight hours.

   You can't tell from this picture, but the small knoll where one of the caches was placed has a pretty steep road to the top of it. Easy for the Jeep to handle, scarier for the human cargo if you're not used to 4x4'ng. Still, it was a chance for the Jeep to stretch it's legs on the short climb and a nice view for me on the way down.

I meandered back down Midday Road towards the town of Merritt and to the Coquihalla Highway, which would run me back down to the Coast. I covered a few miles today puttering on various local roads, all of which hold the promise of more miles to explore. Each road has it's own personality even though they are only separated by a few highway miles.

I even made it back into Maple Ridge at the end of the dinner hour, which was pretty early for me; as many of my day trips end in the late hours of the night. One day trip I did was 22 hours long...now that's making the most of your day !  :)

The snow is now flying in the hills and my day trips are over for the year...time to pull out my reference books, maps and local historical books to plan new adventures for the Spring.

You can watch the video I made of the day by clicking on the video above; for all my videos visit my YouTube page here or see all my pictures on my Flickr photo web site here
50+ videos and 2700 or so photos document a lot of my travels in our great part of the world.

Merritt Day Tripping

Back roads and a Jeep - they were made for each other,.and the Merritt BC area has plenty of back roads to explore.

I had a few days of holidays to use up so I picked a week in September, kept my fingers crossed that the rains would hold off and planned on spending one of those days on a solo day trip to Merritt. Well, that trip happened and I had a blast !

I printed off a few caches in the south Merritt area and a bit more to the north around Nicola Lake; these two areas would provide a start and a finish to a side road that I had been wanting to do for a couple of years. Seems like when ever we come to Merritt we are always hitting the main areas and main accumulation of geocaches - today it was just me and a chance to wander where ever I wanted.

TIP: click on any picture to make them full size for better viewing

I pulled in to Merritt around lunch time after having a slow start to the day (hey! I'm on holidays) and turned into the Merritt tourist centre right at the end of the Coquihalla Highway. Right beside the tourist bureau was the start of my aforementioned back road.

The road heads east along the Connector and follows the new road uphill for a mile or so; it quickly became apparent that this small two lane road was the original highway before they built the newer four lane freeway. Gravel was replaced by blacktop as the road curved and wound it's way up the hill...it occurred to me that I had driven on this road many years before but that was so long ago I think I was a kid back then..

 After finding three geocaches along the old highway it was time for the main attraction of the day - the "Princeton Cutoff Road" so named as it bypasses the town of Merritt by running south - north ending at the south end of Nicola Lake.

These ranch roads always hold such promise of hidden scenery that they are irresistible to me - look at the picture above...doesn't it make you want to see what's down that road?

The road wound through a wash as it followed the topography of the creek in and out of small stands of trees and then into open areas. Each twist of the road brought a new sight line to enjoy.

 Each time you thought you had a wide open view of the ranch land you would take one more turn and.........

.....a new vista would open up that would tease you to stop and savor the view...which I did, that's why it took me so long to go just a mile or two. Plus, there were two geocaches along this ranch road that was a added bonus to the scenery.

As I got closer to the north end of the road Chutter Ranch appeared below looking as idyllic as it could be. Crops are all done for the year other than some small hay fields going late into the season
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 The road took a narrow path down the side of a bluff, only enough space here for one vehicle so you better hope no one is coming towards you.

Eventually the road dumps you at the southern end of Nicola Lake...not wanting to miss a good photo op for a Jeep-like commercial I had to do some Jeep "vouge-ing"

I headed north along Nicola Lake to pick up a few new caches that were not here last time I came through; these were simple stop and grab me caches. One of them was a Gold Rush cache highlighting the Quilchena Ranch that had it's start in 1882. The ranch still operates today, although on a smaller scale than in it's glory days.

 The show case these days is the Quilchena Hotel; built in 1908, it was originally used as a stage coach house but now operates as a boutique hotel with 16 rooms available with fine dining for the palette and a golf course next door for those times your are in between fishing.

 Just down the road back towards Merrit is Upper Nicola, a small village that was booming in the late 1800s and early 1900s.The area is now a museum of sorts and several buildings have been renovated and highlighted for what the were back in the day.

I don't think you ever wanted to end up in the court house back then; in the early days Judge Matthew Begbie was known as "the Hanging Judge" for sending half a dozen men to the gallows for their crimes.

I love the way the geographic locations were named for exactly what they were...it's all in the name.
Hope you enjoyed day tripping with me to Merritt...much more to see in the area so I'll be back in the near future!

These pictures and more of the same trip can be viewed on my Flickr web site here....
PSSSST...right click on the link and say "open in a new window