Barney in Safety Gear
I havent posted much recently, sorry. This picture is of Barney geared up for sitting by a camp fire in pyjamas. He wasnt coughing nor did his eyes stream from the smoke but ours did, the crafy blighter.
We travelled on a logging road from Port Renfrew right across vancouver Island to Cowichan Lake where this picture was taken.
On the way we stopped at Lizard Lake, where trout fishermen told us the road ahead was passable with care, but no one had actually done it. It turned out to be the hairiest part of the trip so far. We had gone so far and each time the road got worse we thought it was too far to go back so we ploughed on. Then it would get worse than before. It took 4 and a half hours of bone shaking, vibrating driving for the poor old motorhome on corrugated mud and gravel roads, up and down mountains. The roar of the engine was drowned out for the first time by the chattering of the crockery and Wendys teeth.
Every 5 miles or so we passed a gang mending the road and it was a relief to know that if we had broken down it would not have been too far to walk back for assistance. Because of the delays caused by work gangs it also meant the road was not a good route for speeding logging trucks, because, had they been on the road at the same time as us we would have been massacred. They are pretty intimidating on regular roads but now we were on their turf. At one point we were going up a hillside with a zigzag of hairpin turns on a single track dirt road with no passing places and we looked at each other thinking if anything comes the other way, even a small car we would be buggered. We couldnt have turned reversed or anything, and would still be there now.
Towards the end of this stretch of road the hillsides had been cleared of trees by the loggers, and it felt like we were travelling through a moonscape for miles. I have asked Matt to host some video of it that Wendy took as it is like nothing Ive seen before and I will link to it here soon. The logging companies clear cut everything and leave behind a mess of stumps and desolation. They craftily dont do this where anyone is likely to see it unless they venture off the tarmac roads, and where they do log near roads they stop far enough from them to not make it so obvious to passersby just how devastating it is.
I havent posted much recently, sorry. This picture is of Barney geared up for sitting by a camp fire in pyjamas. He wasnt coughing nor did his eyes stream from the smoke but ours did, the crafy blighter. We travelled on a logging road from Port Renfrew right across vancouver Island to Cowichan Lake where…