Back to the Dempster, 2011 – Part 3 b

The weather hasn’t gotten any better here in real time, so back to Kiniskan where we woke up to not a bad day…cloudy and showery from time to time but not bad considering…

Ernie and Don headed out fishing….

and this time he actually caught a fish…we won’t say how many Don caught.  Our thing is photographing anything to do with nature….theirs is fishing…’nuff said!

back at the campsite April had discovered there was a real ‘house’ here….would somebody please let me in???

Later we set out to go for a walk along the trail that runs beside the lake…Shantz was the one that spotted this Spruce Grouse family right at the entrance to the trail…mom on the right, one of the youngsters on the left…

think this was another of the youngsters….saw 3, there may well have been more…they are very good at hiding..

the trail runs along the lakeshore headed away from the campground…

ending at this open area…

There were quite a few Shorebirds here…including this Least Sandpiper…(Ernie took this picture)

and a Solitary Sandpiper…

some Loons out on the lake but that big raft of them seen the day before was gone…

in my quest for berry pictures….here were some nice ripe Black Currants…

and here was where we first spotted this white flower…it’s name is ‘Northern Grass of Parnassus’ – a rather long name for quite a small flower.  The ‘colour’ is ‘Bastard Toadflax’ and we’ll be seeing a lot more of this plant…

another flower here, although past it’s prime was ‘Sitka Burnet’

and the fungi here were these ‘prickly’ puffballs which again…aren’t in the book we bought…they were growing in the gravel right at the edges of the road.

and we’ll end the day with some more birds…these are young Tennessee Warblers… We spent a total of 2 nights at Kiniskan…tomorrow we’ll be moving on…

Back to the Dempster – part 3

In real time it is such a horrible day that I have to escape somewhere, anywhere, so even though the weather wasn’t great back on August 15th, it was better than it is here on January 4th!  Everyone who RV’s has a favorite spot – for those that know us, you know ours is Tunkwa Lake….for our friends in Terrace – it is Kiniskan…so the plan was that we would give them 24 hrs to pack their 5th wheel and then we would meet at Kiniskan Provincial Park, which is the middle one of the 3 campgrounds on the Stewart-Cassiar Highway….since they had a long haul from Terrace we figured they wouldn’t arrive until late so we took our time getting ready to leave, and then, we didn’t think there was any sense going out to Stewart, but we did head out that way to see the Bear Glacier….

We’d forgotten just how far along that road it was….

and there it is…getting smaller and smaller all the time…I remember being here when the ice was almost right beside the road…

at this point we turned around and headed back to the highway…this was another small glacier beside the road….and see…sunshine!

up on the hillside just a hint of fall colour – maybe there is hope after all!

Continued on through Bell Two where we stopped for fuel because in this country you buy fuel when you find it….through Dease Lake until we reached…

the rest area with two names….neither of which I can remember at the moment!

There were some very pushy Ravens here….

Shantz tolerated them until one decided to grab her crust of bread…(Shantz loves bread – don’t ask me why!)

they did give me an opportunity to get the best Raven pictures I’ve ever gotten – not sure what this guy planned to do with this stick…

back on the road and pulled into the campground at Kiniskan….just got backed in….

and our friends pulled in right behind us…that is us in the background..

this was taken the next morning…I was standing in the door of the camper…it shows how close all the campsites in this campground are to the lake…

speaking of the lake…Ernie took this picture just after we pulled in…those were all Common Loons out there…we never saw that many again…

and I’ll continue with Kiniskan a bit later….