Entries about family time

We arrived at Mabel Lake, to the 5 acre spread of Susan and Keith Gray. Their property is a gardener's delight, on the shores of Lusk Lake.

Susan and Keith have lived here since 1970, raising their three children here at the end of the 35 kilometer long Enderby-Mabel Lake Road. They grew most of their own veggies and raised chickens, hens, their own milk cow and perhaps grew the best sweet corn I have ever eaten. Ever summer my then wife Donna, and our kids, Danielle and Matthew came here for 2 weeks each August, and stayed in their rustic guest cabin and enjoyed life on the farm. The kids learned to milk cows, ride horses, pick fresh laid eggs and help out in the garden. Our summer's here were always a greatly enjoyed event.

This summer, on our epic journey with TaJ, our R-pod, Jenny and I planned to meet up with my daughter Danielle, her guy Tyler and their two children, Beckett and Nylah. The routine has been pretty well the same every morning since we arrived. Once the door of the trailer is opened, the kids come tearing out of the house to jump into bed with Grampa and Jenny, and the rest of the day kind of just flows from there. Walks to the beach, swimming, Uncle Keith fooling around. Lots of good food, coffee and conversation.

This is just the tonic Jenny and I need after 87 days on the road. We are taking a full week off the road here to recharge our batteries and plan the second half of this adventure.

Keith has a beaten up old dock out into the lake that badly needs resurfacing, so he and I are working on the project mornings, before the heat of the day comes on.

The whole family helped out. Daughter Danielle walked to the end of the dock and stripped off the old wood and vegetation. Jenny, Tyler, Beckett and Nylah helped pull nails out of the scrap wood and carried the debris to the burn pile. Keith and I hammered lots of 8 inch nails into the new cross beams and 4 inch nails into the deck boards. Quite the job.

The workers pose on the almost completed decking:

Nylah stopped to smell the flowers:

We got to hang our laundry out on the line to dry, in the hot Okanagan sun!

There is a 9 hole golf course directly across the street from their house, and for years Keith has been picking up golf balls that come over the fence. He has been selling them 5 for a $1 at the local summer market, but recently has not been bothering to sell them. Beckett took it upon himself to count the hoard of golf balls one hot sunny afternoon. He lined them up on the deck and the count began. Amazingly, there were 857 golf balls in total in Keith's stash. He does not play golf, but he collects golf balls.

Over Sep 3 and 4 Beckett, Nylah, Grampa and Tyler have managed to add another 43 golf balls, bringing the size of Keith's hoard to 900 golf balls. Amazing!!

When we are done here on Tuesday, September 5 we will head straight south, into Washington State, where we will meet up with George and Karmen Reid, our travel buddies for a few days.

Susan and Keith have been great hosts and it has been great to see Danielle, Tyler, Beckett and Nylah.

Summary of travel so far:

We are now 22,000 kilometers into our trip, and will be at day 96 when we leave here. We have been in 8 Canadian Provinces, 2 Territories, and the state of Alaska. We have ticked off the bucket list item of going to Haida Gwaii (or the Queen Charlotte Islands) off the west coast of British Columbia. We did the trip to Hyder Alaska to see the Grizzly Bears eating salmon and have seen plenty of glaciers.

This month will see us pass though Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Nevada, California. We expect to reach Joshua Tree National Park by September 30. We should visit 5 National Parks on our run south, mostly in California.