Aimless in Abbotsford

Been a while since I have been Out and About, as the saying goes. Between Covid restrictions and the onset of the poor weather, I have been doing a lot of staring at my collection of video and photography equipment hoping I get a chance to use it again.

This Sunday was an unexpected day where we had nothing on the agenda, and pretty well all the chores were up to date. An break in the non-stop chain of rain storms meant a few hours of dry time for me to be out wandering around.

I kept it simple, I picked my trusty point and shoot camera, and headed to the Fraser Valley town of Abbotsford. I knew of a few eye worthy places to snap some pics, and thought I would explore some of the little sides streets I had not been down before.

To see these pictures in a larger format, click on any photo.

Go ahead, you know you want to !

My first side excursion of the day was to poke around Matsqui, a farming community on the north side of the Fraser River. Straight roadways lined with trees planted as windbreaks is a hallmark of farming areas and there were plenty examples to be seen here.

The flat farming terrain also provided views of the low clouds enveloping the low mountains forming the ridge of the Fraser Valley. 

  The clouds clung to the higher mountains on the northside of the valley even more so, blocking out any scenic shots to be had in that direction.

After dawdling in Matsqui I headed over to main main objective for the day, the Township of Abbotsford. And now you are wondering, what's so special about these two buildings in the picture above? Well, if you have ever watched those Hallmark TV movies you would have seen these two buildings in many of those movies. At least, that is what my wife tells me ..  yeah ....

Vancouver is called Hollywood North and it is not uncommon to have two dozen TV/movies shoots ongoing at any given time. One of the most common movie channels to shoot in the area is Hallmark. For some reason they seem to love this two buildings - they are either using the older white building or the larger brick building as a main movie location. Seeing as I was already here exploring Abbotsford,  I naturally had to see for myself where these were actually located.

The Hallmark buildings are located in the old section of Abbotsford, which is roughly five blocks squared. I parked the car and meandered around the side streets and alleys looking for worthy subjects and came across the murals seen here. They encompass the back of the Hemmingway's book store, a very large and popular used bookstore in town. A lot of time was spent by the artists painting these vibrant murals and they look great and add life to a forgotten back alley.

A few years ago the Downtown association commissioned several sculptures to add to the visuals of the area. These three guys are very lifelike and have been in many a tourist photo. I also have snapped them a few times over the years.

The Goose in the Truck adds a touch of whimsy to the scenery, I have to admit, this Goose looks like he has real attitude! I can just imagine him leaning on the horn yelling for people to get out of his way! Must have received his license in downtown Vancouver  :)

The "art" scene is represented as well with a bench in the form of a large easel complete with dripping brush, all supported by a squeezed out tube of paint. Sadly the surface of this bench is in need of some TLC. Would look so much more vibrant if it was cleaned up and resurfaced.

 After exploring more of the downtown side streets, I decided to head towards another historic section of the general Abbotsford area, in the village of Clayburn. As I drifted in that general direction I kept my eye out for anything that caught my eye. And this sure did - Snoopy flying a Sopwith Camel airplane! I spotted this in someone's backyard mounted high for all to see from the street. That was definitely worth a stop to snap a picture - great job by the resident ! 

I took the long way around as I headed into Clayburn as I wanted to reach higher ground to obtain an aerial view of the surrounding area. I had circled back towards the Fraser River and was getting close to the Matsui farmlands again. Clayburn is nestled against those low mountains seen in the first scenic picture of this post. These low mountains have something needed for building construction at the turn of the century - clay. Perfect for molding into bricks and when heated and fired, perfect for building brick buildings.

I have been to the village of Clayburn several times over the years but only to look at the old General Store and the ruins of the brick ovens in the nearby bush. 

Today very little remains of the original town buildings. A few brick bungalows that were workmen cottages, and the General store. The land where the original factory buildings stood seems to have been cleared and is now a soccer field. It is quite possible they have bulldozed away the old kiln ovens. In the past, when I have walked through the bush, you would stumble upon a pile of brick rejects that broke during the firing process, so they were just dumped outside in a pile. I have retrieved a few bricks from those piles, all bearing the Clayburn name. So popular were the bricks, it was not uncommon for me to discover historic buildings in other cities in Southern BC built by bricks bearing the Clayburn name.

Today I spent an hour or so walking the side streets and discovered the original Clayburn School, and the Clayburn Church, which were new to me. These two building were only a block off the main street,  but I had yet to see them in all my travels in the area. Thus proving one of my favourite adages - "take the road less travelled, for there is more to see" 

 

These two buildings leant an air of charm to the small village and you could imagine the town folk of the day actively using the buildings as part of their daily lives. While the visible remaining structures from the original Clayburn townsite are small, they still allow you envision a time when the brick factory and the local community compromised the entire world for the work force. Vancouver probably seemed a long ways away. In the day, a trip to Vancouver was an all day event using the B.C. Electric train that ran from Chilliwack to Vancouver, with stops at various Fraser Valley communities along the way.

My last stop of the day was back across to the north side of the Fraser River into the town of Mission. Originally a major First Nations community, the first Europeans were Oblate priests whom established a mission high on the hill above the river.

With the coming of the CPR railroad, the city itself was created through a land auction by the stake holders of the railroad. Farming was the original economy of the area, however the salmon industry soon became a driving force as well. Five species of salmon inhabit the Fraser River, providing a large industry to exploit. White Sturgeon are found from the Mission Bridge, upstream to the town of Yale in the Fraser Canyon. The White Sturgeon live for over 100 years and grow up to 20 feet long. The sturgeon are true dinosaurs, as they have not changed much in millions of years.  

Supplementing the fishery industry was the boat and net repair companies. While many of these businesses have died off, the small industrial riverfront area shows its heritage by the businesses along the side streets    

The shore front has been cleaned up allowing for pedestrian access. A large viewing platform has been created for the locals to rest and sit on the benches while they enjoy their coffee watching the comings and goings of the local ship traffic. The local mountains complement the view by providing a scenic backdrop for daily life on the river. Like Abbotsford, Mission City has begun to install pieces of art around the city. With its large First Nations presence, some of the pieces have been created by local native artists. The Bald Eagle sculpture shown here represents the importance of the eagle in First Nations history. The statue also serves as a reminder of when the Bald Eagle congregate in the area each Winter. Just to the east of Mission is the Harrison River.  Each winter thousands of Bald Eagles migrate south from their summer grounds in Alaska and spend the winter feasting on the salmon runs in the Pacific Northwest. The primary winter feeding grounds are; just north of Squamish in the town of Brackendale; in the Harrison River area of the Fraser Valley; and in the U.S. south of the border in the upper Skagit River Valley. I've been to all three locations during the winter feeding times, and by far the Harrison River offers the most accessible viewing of the eagles. 

   By now the day was coming to an end, as daylight was beginning to wane, and the small bits of open skies were being replaced by darker clouds. Another round of rain storms are on the way, but at least I enjoyed a long overdue day of being Out & About in my extended "backyard" compromised of the 100 mile long Fraser Valley. Time to head home, download my pictures and see what I captured of the day.

If you liked the write up please leave a comment below.

A more complete set of the day's pictures can be viewed on my Flickr site here     
   

Geocaching Around Dewdney And Deroche BC

My brother Ken and myself spent a late Autumn day geocaching in the Dewdney - Deroche areas just east of Mission BC. We are known as tjguy98 (me) and MrTJ (Ken) so if you see those names in the cache logs then you know we have been in the area.

Mission City is approx 60 miles east of Vancouver BC and is the farthest upriver the strong tides of the Pacific Ocean reach. There is excellent fishing in the area and is the lowest part of the Fraser River where you will find large White Sturgeon that can grow to over twenty feet in length.

Today we were not fishing but we were "fishing" for geocaches hidden under rocks and tree stumps and in any little crevice the cache hider could find along the dikes encompassing the Fraser River and it's surrounding sloughs. The part that Ken and I like about geocaching is that it brings you to many new places that you had not come before and you get to enjoy just a little bit more of spectacular B.C.

The day's travels would take us to such places as: the iconic institution of Tim Hortons, a log carving, a set of geocaches based on the over-winter bird population, have us doing a little bit of creek hopping, and surprise us with a collection of memorabilia.

First up.....gassing up the Jeep in Mission and then walking across the street to Tim Hortons to find one of the many "Midnight Run.." caches hidden at many of the Lower Mainland Timmys..
Easy find, we are 1 for 1 so far on the day....that's a good sign...sometimes we are not that lucky :)

On the road now our next stop was several miles along the Lougheed Hwy on a dike of the Nicomen Slough.The geocache highlighted an old stump that someone had randomly carved the face of a bear into. (Picture above).
I don't know if the bear had been carved into a burnt stump or some jack ass lit fire to the carving - both actions are equally possible.

It was kind of neat in a quirky way to come across this random piece of art work - cool that some one took the time to do that so we could enjoy it.

The next several caches were part of the "Nicomen Slough Waterfowl" series placed along the dikes of the slough. This is a great over-winter birding area and many species of water fowl can be found here...it's one of my favourite Sunday drive areas during the winter months to go birding.

Click on any picture to see the pictures full size....

The geocacher known as The 10Coin" has hidden a series of 8 caches all highlighting different birds that frequent the area. The cache owners gives a brief description of the bird on their cache page, so learn a little bit while you are enjoying the scenery.

 In some places we were able to drive along the dikes from cache to cache which led to the natural inclination for me to "vogue" the Jeep as if I was making a Jeep commercial...yeah I know...the dike doesn't look too tough for a Jeep to handle!  LOL

 While I was out "shooting" the Jeep, MrTJ was off feeding the horses that wandered over to see what the heck we were doing on their dike......I didn't try expounding on gestational orbiting satellites to them as they looked more interested in the grass in MrTJ's hand. Horses....you can't teach them anything...

    
A few more bird caches had us searching down at the dikes edge all the while providing picturesque views One of the geocaches in the bird series was hidden in an actual birdhouse...how apra pro... :)

The bird series was finished off with all caches found and it was time to move on to the next caches on the list.
One cache worth mentioning along the Nicomen dikes is "Devious Dad" by the same cacheer The 10Coin.
This was a clever, well constructed cache which we thoroughly enjoyed. It took a few minutes to figure out where the cache had to be and then how to access the cache, but it was worth the hunt once we found it and The 10Coin deserves props for taking the time to put out such a cache. A lot of work wnet into this and their fellow geocachers do appreciate it. No picture to show you as I don't want to ruin it if you happen to go out looking for it.

The next cache to find had us "Creek Hopping" alongside Pattison Creek, a small creek that feeds into the hidden Hatzic Valley. Luckily this was still low water time as it would have meant a fair amount of bush whacking otherwise. We had to skip along the north side of the creek (to the right in the picture) and we were able to walk along the creek bed daintily stepping on and over boulders hoping we don't take a tumble and smack our behinds on the creek rocks.

It's always good to look upstream under the bridge before you turn your back on it and start walking downstream. I can't tell you how many geocachers have told me they have been surprised, and in turn, surprised a bear hanging out under bridges. This picture also gives you an idea of how this small creek swells during the winter storms and the Spring freshet.

I took the opportunity to drive a short way along the Sylvester Forest Service Road to pick off the first cache in a series of 4X4 caches up the FRS. As it turns out, an early Autumn storm had washed out the road and the FSR had just re-opened that weekend. The day was too short to go for this series, so I've pegged this for next summer when the mountain snows melt.
Still, it gave us a chance to get off road for a few minutes and enjoy the quietness of the forest and see once again how large some of the trees were in this area when the loggers first came to chop down the trees.

On the way back down the hill we stopped off at Cascade Falls Regional Park. This nature reserve highlights a series of waterfalls that have cool "bowls" worn into the sandstone cliff sides along the creek's course. These are caused by rocks being eroded by the water from the surrounding soft sandstone and as they become loose they start circling in the small hole created around them. As they circle in place they wear down the rock around them creating a very smooth bowl on the water fall's   flat ledges.

Last time I was up this way the parking lot was just gravel and you could drive the FRS uphill as it paralleled the water falls and then follow the road eastbound to the next FSR and then over to the the Ruby Creek drainage area and eventually back onto the Lougheed Hwy closer to Hope BC.

Now the area is closed off to 4 wheelers and instead is limited to those that enjoy the short walk to Cascade Falls...one group looses and another group benefits.....which is better?

Back into the heart of the Hatzic Valley we continued doing some caches hidden along the rural roads. Can you see the cache hide in the picture above? If you're a geocacher you'll pick out the camouflage pretty quick.

Ken and I had to laugh at ourselves at this one....our path to the cache was oh so typical of geocachers...

We parked the Jeep at the side of the road right above a bridge that crossed a mid-sized creek and judging by the GPS we knew the geocache was hidden about 300' away along the creek's edge.

No problem, we already did a Creek Hopping cache, this is just one more of those.
So MrTJ and I start down the the creek edge and realize that we will have to climb up the bank to get above the water as there is no more room to walk along the creek. So, we climb up and find what could best be described as an abandoned deer trail and wind our way through the brush and small trees overgrowing the "trail" until we come to a bit of a clearing in the wood's edge. We backtrack along this clearing for 70' feet or so and come to a larger clearing where the cache is obviously hiding. We find the cache pretty quick and then realize we can follow a bit of a wide area through the forest back to the Jeep.
Well, soon enough it becomes obvious that this is the path we should have taken down to the cache in the first place as it is plainly an old roadway cleared out by a Caterpillar tractor years ago and indeed leads us back to the road just 20' feet away from the Jeep's back bumper! LOL

Across the street from this cache was a house with a large garage and many old signs out on display. The owner was out in the yard cutting his grass so we did the polite thing by stopping and asking him if we could take pictures of his signs. The owner was very wary of us at first until we spoke to him for a bit and told him what we were geocaching in the area and had just done the geochache across the street and down the trail.

The owner wasn't exactly too clear on what geocaching was but he warmed up to us and gave us permission to look around and take pictures. Turns out that the owner has had signs stolen off his garage and house recently so he was a bit suspicious of us at first but after talking to him for a while he relaxed and as I wandered around taking pictures Ken talked to him about swap meets they had both gone to over the years. As it turns out, the owner knows the brother of one of our brother-in-laws and has known him for many years. Ken and this relative had just recently been on a Hawaii cruise with him and our sister and her husband (our brother-in-law) so there was plenty to talk about.

Too much as it turned out as I had to eventually give Ken a kick in the shins to bring him back to why we were out here to begin with....geocaching!

We picked up a few more road side caches as we made our way back into Mission via the back roads. Eventually the short daylight hours started to catch up to us and we called it quits for the day.

We were happy with the day....22 geocaches found along some familiar and new-to-us back roads along with the treasure (in Ken's eyes...mine not so much) of a fellow "swap meeter" with a lot of common people to talk about.

Not a bad way to spend a day all in all...get to have some quality time with a brother, play a bit in the Jeep, find a few tucked away geocaches and do some exploring in the process. Nope, not a bad day at all!

The complete set of pictures for the day can be seen here on my Flickr web site

Fordson Tractor

Annette and I ran out to Mission, the neighbouring community to Maple Ridge, to buy gas (it's a'ways about 15 cents a litre cheaper) and pick up a few groceries while we were there. Coming back we took the scenic rural routes as we were in no hurry to get home. Along the way I spotted this old tractor rusting away at the edge of a patch of black berries. Notice the name, it says "Fordson"

Click on any picture to make them full size.................

Henry Ford and Son company made the Fordson tractor in the U.S. from 1917-1928 when they shifted production overseas.

The Fordson Model F revolutionized farm work the way the Model T revolutionized human transportation. This downsized tractor was affordable to the masses and on many farms one tractor replaced a team of horses and handlers.

The Model F was not the most well built of tractors and in  just a few short years under went several modifications. You can read more about the Fordson tractor here.
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A short drive today reinforced my rule of thumb - "always have a camera with you"! 
Hope you enjoyed this quick peak at our past.