August - the holiday begins again..

Shooting things the old slow way

After a few days r and r in Nakusp and we were allegedly ready for another crack at holidays. This time – west. And so it was after a relatively early start we drove west via Revelstoke and Highway 1 through Salmon Arm and Kamloops before a long overdue lunch stop in Hope. It was all we could hope for. Soon though we were beyond Hope. We headed further west for Langley and the Super 8 that was there in all of its indoor pool glory.

Summer was alive and well in Langley and the temperature hit a homesick helping high of thirty one bloody degrees.

Long valued in Canada - a woman with a weapon

We spent much of the day at Fort Langley, a site of some historic interest as it was here the colony of BC basically began. It was a great place, small but full of interesting details, activities and, during our visit at least a squad of characters, lounging around living traditional roles. I kid you not when I say that there are folks who travel around from Historic Site to Historic Site in character – say a gold panner or a weaver or a hunter etc – and camp there and set their old-day-style tent up and suit themselves in costume and surround themselves with props, artefacts or relicts or antiques or recreations of tools of the time. Now you can’t poke them and it is rude to tease them and call them losers but you can chat to them about their life [either real or fictional] and they’re happy to talk to the tourists. I won’t go so far as to call it cool however it was a great way to bring this history to life and I and the kids found it fascinating.

Fort Langley with the camping traveling players

Megan with ............a lady

Millie [with cloud] Tom [wearing a dress] and Matthew [with sun] involved in a little play production.

Traditional French dancing

The always pleasing sight of Women with brooms

Kids with dead animals

look closely for tourists not in character..............

dead animals dead animals dead animals

Some of the guys showed us traditional weapons; lock, stock and barrel, and fired them loudly. If they fire or rather don’t fire loudly there was just a flash in the pan – external gun powder failing to ignite the gun powder packed in under the bullet. I enjoyed playing an informal game of guess the dead thing when we visited the fur display in an antique fur warehouse and trading store. And the kids played  a few games in a more formal manner. Megan participated in a traditional French dance display while I manfully sat out and watched.

Kids cunningly panning for gold

The heat rather than the lack of interest eventually drove us to the air conditioned surrounds of a shopping centre where we bought some necessities and other things as you do before retreating to the beloved pool.

the three hour wait

The following day we endured a three hour wait for the ferry to Nanaimo before booking into another pooled hotel. Fish and chip dinner was enjoyed at the mural enhanced village of Chemainus and the kids had a little play at a water side park at Ladysmith.