I can not believe it has taken me this long to get this final posting done for the last day at Tunkwa! but it has – so here goes…..
The day started out with Ernie spotting a coyote walking across the lake on the ice….and me throwing on a quilted vest, grabbing a camera, and still in slippers…heading down towards the lake….
where sure enough…there was a coyote on the lake….
but wait…
but wait…there are a pair of Mountain Bluebirds right here in front of me on a picnic table…
Coyote….
Bluebird – what a dilemma! Since the coyote headed off into the little bay and disappeared – the bluebirds won out.
the male….
and the female. By now my hands were getting numb as the temperature was hovering around the freezing mark, so headed back to the camper to thaw out and have breakfast. After breakfast Ernie headed out with Shantz for a ‘short walk’ – yeah right!!!! and I did the final packing up and then took a camera and wandered around in the campground waiting for the ‘short’ (hour and a half) walk to end.
I had taken this picture earlier…note the mountains disappearing behind a haze of snow….it didn’t get any better…
wandered up back – this was one of a pair of geese just sitting around…
and what is that down there?
a Yellow bellied Marmot! We knew they were awake as Shantz had spotted one in a culvert the day before and I had seen another one earlier, up under one of the pit toilets.
down by the water I say good bye (hopefully) to the geese. By this time my imagination has the best of me and I’m telling myself I really have to learn how to do things like raise the jacks on the camper and drive the truck……when they finally meander back – they didn’t intend to be that long – right!
So we pack up, amid the snowflakes and head south towards Merritt….stopping at one spot where there were
a total of 18 Mule Deer – all does – in a field…then onto Merritt for lunch and topping up the gas tank where we see a fifth wheel with snow plastered all over the front of it so asked if they had come over the Coquilla – yes they had…the road was OK as it was wet with the temperature around 1 degree but visibility was really bad with fog and snow….so, once again, we elected to head down the Nicola Valley to Spences Bridge and home via the Canyon.
Stopped along the route…
spring was definitely coming to this part of the country, in fact we had seen Balsam Root in flower on some of the hillsides. There were no Balsam Root here but..
the Sagebrush Buttercups were well advanced, in fact almost finished flowering…
and the Western Saxifrage was in full flower. I was amazed to see that the wild Larkspur was in bud as well and would no doubt be in flower in a few days time. Dessert Parsley was also in flower.
So this brings this trip to it’s conclusion. In a week and a day we will be heading out the gates for 6 weeks on the road – headed east – who knows to exactly where. I’ve got a brand new digital SLR Camera to play with as well as the other two so I should have enough pictures to do blog entries all through the summer – my least favourite time of the year!
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