Daddy... can we do that again?!?

Yesterday we did a little more local adventuring with Dick and Judy. After lunch downtown we drove up to the Fording River mine site to see what we could see from the front gates. Todd had tried to get a mine truck to take us on a tour but as unable to.

When we arrived at the gate we saw a huge crane parked at the base of the coal loading tower. With the mine being on shutdown until tonight, they had brought in equipment to do maintenance on it.

Since the loading tower was down, they were having to load coal the old fashion way, by HUGE loader! This bucket can hold 5 regular sized dump trucks worth of coal in one load!

Spencer loved watching them load the coal in the coal rail cars.

Then we adventured back towards Elkford again and took the Fording Road off through the maintains. We came across a few rock slides along the edge of the river and easily made it over them with the Jeep. We took the Fording Road back to Sulphur Springs Road and then ventured up it to over look Elkford. I think we were at about 1400+ meters when this picture was taken.

At almost the end of Sulphur Springs Upper Road, there is Lost Lake. We walked the short distance in to have a peek at the calm lake. There was even a pair of loons there!

Back down the road we started towards the valley again. Just a few feet from the entrance to the Lost Lake trail we encountered a "puddle". Now to understand this, you must know that the front roof panels on the Jeep were OFF... so Todd INTENTIONALLY drove through the rather DEEP MUD puddle FAST and the muddy water splashed up and over the windshield, through the open roof, passing Todd and Dick in the front seats and WHAM!.... right across Judy's, Spencer's and my faces! The first thing out of Spencer's mouth was... "Daddy! Can we do that again!!!!????" It's was hilarious! We all couldn't stop howling! I wish I had gotten a picture of our 3 faces... covered in muddy water sitting in the back seat!

On our way back down the road to the valley again, we stopped to pick wild raspberries. Spencer ate more than he was putting in his bag.... which was expected!

Grandpa was helping Spencer fill his bag as fast as he could eat them!

We caught some photos of some bumble bees collecting pollen on the many brightly coloured thistles. There we clusters of them feeding on them.

We ventured back down the valley aways, crossed the river and back up past Grave Lake where we came across the same avalanche area that we had encountered in the winter time. This time there was no snow and just simply green everywhere. Here's a blog post with a picture of the exact same area in February... HERE (3rd picture in).

Spencer climbed up on a rock and did a little dance in celebration for getting out of the Jeep for a few minutes.

We arrived a home a little while later and had a nice porkchop dinner on the BBQ. Overall, it was a great day of adventuring!