Trout fishin'

Friday night Kathy, Jack and I went out in the little boat for a couple hours and caught four rainbow trout for Saturday dinner.  Saturday Jack, Kathy, Wendy, Fuzzy, and I loaded up and went out in his big boat for a few hours fishing.  We were fortunate to limit out in about 3 hours with 12 - 14" rainbows.  Everyone had a great day and we bbq'd up a mess of fish for the birthday (Jack and I) supper. 

Pics of all having fun, except Jack and Kathy were doing their best trying to be non photogenic...

Back to Fraser Lake

No pictures; this was just a day to pack up fast and make the run back to Fraser Lake. Like I said, the weekend crowd had begun to arrive Thursday, so Thursday night we had enough kids, bikes, motorcycles, family discussions, dogs, kids, loud music, kids, etc. to last us the whole weekend. We were on the road by 9:30 and after a leisurely day's drive (90 - 95 km/hr is fast enough) we were back in Fraser Lake around 3:30 PM.


By the way, if you stay at Lakelse bring along change for the dumpstation as well... they want you to pay an extra $5 to dump off, despite having already taken $75 of your cash for the last three nights. Imagine! We hauled our honey back to Fraser Lake, where we'd planned to fill up with water at the FREE dumpstation anyway. Needless to say. Sheesh.

Kitimat

Thursday was for a day trip down to Kitimat, which was only about 40 km from the campground so a lot shorter trip than Prince Rupert. We were MUCH more impressed than the day before, and Wendy and I can see ourselves coming back for a few weeks or so some future summer. One of the great things about Kitimat is the Giant Spruce Park area, which is right along the river just below the bridge. There's a free boondocking area there, with all the comforts of BLM land plus a river with salmon just outside your door... I'm not sure it gets much better than that.

After a quick tour of town, lunch at the local DQ, and a few groceries we headed back to the campsite. Wendy and Fuzzy headed for the beach while I grabbed my tackle and headed back down the road to practice a little fly throwing. I managed to catch one, too small to keep, and get a few more bites so I was happy, and the others had a great afternoon at the beach.

Google map

Prince Rupert

The campground at Lakelse Lake is amongst the big Cedars and Sitka Spruce, so if you're looking for a shady spot with a beach and you don't mind paying $25 for an unserviced site it's great. During the week the campground wasn't too crowded so they gave us a spot right on the beach loop as long as we promised to vacate by Friday when it was reserved. Come Friday morning we were more than happy to leave as the weekend crowd had started to arrive. Most of you will know what that means.


Anyway, we made Wednesday the day to dash out to Prince Rupert to see what that was all about. Interesting drive and the weather was good but we were not knocked off our feet by the destination. Maybe it we were headed for a charter booking it would have been a little different but just to do the tourist thing I don't think I'd do it again.

We made a detour to Port Edward on the way back, and went out to see the North Pacific Cannery museum. Quite interesting, if you're out this way and have a spare couple hours it's worth the browse.

Terrace

In between the repairs, we did manage to have some good visit time with mom and the Greens, honest. Still, it was time to pack up and head west so we could get a couple touristy days in before the long weekend rush. The plan is to hit the coast and be back in Fraser Lake before the rush.

So far, so good - we made the run over to Lakelse Lake campground, which is about 20 km south of Terrace. Plan is a couple of days here while we day trip, and then run east again before the weekend.

Hose repairs

Fortunately, the local Auto Sense dealer could make me up the two hoses in about 5 minutes, which was about 100 times faster than the time it took me to take the old ones off and put the new ones on, bleed the connections, make darn sure they were tied up away from the manifold, etc. Oh well, a minor bump in the road really. My only real regret is that I didn't have a certain shirt to wear for the repairs...

Trust me, the picture doesn't do very good justice... I wore more oil than I have for a couple years.

Hooch time.

Fraser Lake #1

Made the trip from Lucerne to Fraser Lake in a long driving day. May have been just a little too long as this was the closest I could get to a smile from the two passengers.

When we checked into our usual spot in the 24-mile campground, I got a rude awakening when I hit the switch for the levelling jacks: hydraulic fluid everywhere! Uh oh, didn't we do this last year? (yep, we did). Something about Fraser Lake that those jacks don't like.

Slightly different problem this year - see that bundle of hydraulic lines? Those are for the jacks. See the exhaust manifold? It's not supposed to be quite that close to those lines. Turns out a cable tie or two let go and dropped the whole bundle onto the manifold - melted one line in two and halfway through another.


Time for hooch.