Summer was hot and fiery and smokey.  We spent every second weekend at the cabin.  This year we had some visitors, so it was more exciting.  We did a lot of tubing and fishing and swimming.  No campfires though, once summer started.  Other than the first few weekends of sandbagging, we didn’t get a lot of work done on the place.  We did get a bit of practice putting in and taking out the Big Ugly Boat (we haven’t christened her yet, but I’m thinking we could call her BUB).  And Richard is now a pro at backwards driving with a boat trailer.  For wildlife around there, we saw beavers, deer, loons, hummingbirds, bats, and a bear!

Went up north for our two week vacation at the end of summer – cabin, Quesnel, Vanderhoof, Barkerville, Quesnel again and cabin again.  Everything smelled like smoke even though there we had no campfires.

Had a nice time though.  In Vanderhoof, we went to the Nechako White Sturgeon Conservation Centre. Did you know that they have sturgeon of many different sizes there?  Even ones as big as 6 feet long?  There was a big spinning wheel that had all the different ways a sturgeon baby/egg might die or live.  The kids kept spinning it and dying is such terrible ways.  Died at one day old, eaten.  Died at 3 days, sunk into the silty bottom and suffocated.  Richard was lucky, he lasted a bit longer but died from a deformation from inbreeding (haha).  Grandpa was the lucky one who got the one skinny slice of the wheel which said “You live to be 100 years old!”.  It snowed ashes that day.

Barkerville was fun.  We went to school there and the teacher checked our fingernails and looked for headlice.  This was the first time I remember going to the Richfield Courthouse (I remember it being called the Hanging Judge).  It was quite interesting to be on the jury of a re-enactment of an old murder case.  A very funny re-enactment.  Anyways, it was pouring rain (booo for us who had to run 1.86 km back to Barkerville from Richfield, but yay for the firemen)!

We did many other fun things on our trip, but my brain is fuzzy and I must go.

Now that summer is over, the kids are back in school. Grade 4 and 7.  Yeesh.  They are growing up so fast.