(Posted 260622) Saturday was sort of an anti-travel day, where our stopping place for the night was a mere 15 km away from the previous night's. But along the way, we stopped at a park to see a series of tree carvings.
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Once the tire changing party was over, things were actually reasonably quiet in our section of the parking lot overnight and by the time we woke up at 8:30 on Saturday morning there was only a small handful of vehicles (mostly RVs, like us) left in the lot. On her morning walk, Christine noticed that "Mr. PG" ("a symbol of the importance of the forest industry to the city") was on the corner of the road behind us.
While we were doing our morning routine, a new RV pulled across a number of spots in the next row pretty much where the tire changing party had been last night. The occupants proceeded to bring out their tables and chairs, and have their own little party in the parking lot. We're not sure what about that spot makes it such a hotbed of social activity.
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We left the casino around 10:30 and drove 6.8 km NW to the Cottonwood Island Nature Park, to find the tree bark carvings there. We noticed all the "Bear Aware" signs posted on the way in so we had the bear spray with us when left the T42 this time. But that didn't stop us from having to return to the van 5 minutes into our hike, when the plentiful mosquitoes in the park realized that Tasty Tom had arrived and started coming around for a snack; an application of lemon eucalyptus repellant helped to deter most of them.
Using Google Maps, Christine thought that she had found an interpretive sign on a different path than we had started out on the first time that might describe the location of the tree bark carvings, but the sign ended up just being about the trees in general and not about the carvings. We ended up continuing on that path anyway, which paralleled the river for half the park, seeing nothing but 1) the little floating tuffs of white that we had been seeing for a few days now that we now realized were cottonwood seeds, and 2) large patches of dandelion which we've also been seeing a lot of lately, and are beginning to the think might be the state flower of British Columbia. We eventually reached a different parking area, which had a straight access path to a bridge to the island. Once on the island, it wasn't long before we finally started seeing the carvings we were looking for.
After the huge chainsaw carvings we saw in Hope, we almost missed the first tree bark carving we passed. The carvings are comparatively tiny, with most ranging in size from 3 to 8 inches tall - although some trees have small clusters of them instead of just a single one.
There was sort of one main path meandering across the island, that had several tributary paths off of it that led to the views of the Nechako Rivers. The carvings were along both parts of the main path as well as a couple of the tributaries as well, so it took a little exploring to find them all (assuming we didn't miss any).
This little guy isn't a tree bark carving, but he was looking really cute so we took his picture anyway.
If you spend enough time looking at tree bark for faces carved into them, you start seeing faces that aren't really there. At least we're
pretty sure that this wasn't an actual carving that had either never been completed, or had started to grow over.
And here are the last two carvings we found.
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After the park, we drove 12 km north to the Hartfield RV Park, where we had reservations for the night for a full hookup site. We checked in at the office, which was nicely decorated . . .
. . . and found our site.
Having a full hookup site not only gave us a place to dump and fill our tanks - which we needed around now - but also a plentiful water supply to be able to do a large quantity of dishes after cooking up a bunch of food for the upcoming boondocking days. After filling our water bottles and having lunch, we washed our backlog of "dirty" dishes and then Christine cooked up a fresh pot of rice and a pasta dish to store for the next few days. Meanwhile, Tom used the reasonably fast Wi-Fi to work on blog post #5.
Dinner that night was burgers, grilled potatoes, and salad. This interesting little caterpillar (?) crawled out of the picnic table to say "hi" to Tom while he was grilling.
After another round of dish washing, we availed ourselves of the free hot water showers in the bath house - our first free-running-water showers since leaving the Olympic Peninsula five days ago. We then continued to use the Wi-Fi to work on the blog and planning activities until bed time at 11:30.
Tomorrow we'll be back on the road.
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