Month: July 2018

Gold we found gooold!

Our brother in law Vic and Rosalie’s cousin Dean, own a gold claim way up North of Fort St James. They invited another brother law, Gordie and I to come along for a short ‘holiday’. I had been promising to go to the claim for several years but never managed to make it. But this time I went. Gordie also bought along his grandson Lyndon.

We were to be in Prince George on Sunday but Rosalie had an appointment on Saturday evening for an MRI to find out what the problem was with her arms falling asleep. We expected to get to Hope at about midnight. As it turned out, she was finished early so we were able to catch an earlier ferry.

We got to the hotel only to find out that I had somehow booked for the following night and the place was full. The manager though, had reserved a room for himself and gave us that one. Phew!

We arrived in PG at about 5 pm the following day. Vic had a 14 ft cargo trailer that we had to load so we set to work on that. The quad went in first then everything else.

The following morning, after several false starts, we eventually got away at about 9 am. The first 2 hours were fine as we were on paved roads. Once we got to Fort St James we stopped to top up on a few essentials like booze. We didn’t want to run out as we were going to be out of contact for several days.

For the next six hours we drove an average speed of 50 kmh over dirt roads. We got to the camp,site at about 5 pm. On the way we saw a couple of bears, one, a grizzly. We were at an elevation of 3,800 feet and the temperature was 1 deg C. It was raining and the wind was blowing. As Gordie and I got out of the truck, he looked at me and siad”WTF have we let ourselves in for.”

We had to unload the cargo trailer as that was to be our sleeping quarters. We got our cots and sleeping bags set up, and after that, we got a fire going had bit to eat and a few drinks and settled in for the night.

Now our ordeal began. It rained on and off throughout the night and the wind blew so hard it was banging the aluminum sides of the trailer to keep us nicely awake. The trailer wasn’t heated so we froze. Tomorrow we would make some changes and go for gold.

Here a few photos.

I was hacked!

As we all know, some miscreant hacked my blog site. Who in their right mind would want to hack me. I can see it if I was Hillary Clinton or some ginormous corporation. But me! What did I do beside upset a few people with my opinions. I don’t know what the world is coming to.

As you can see, this site is pretty raw because I’m learning as I go along. The content is the thing though.

As I haven’t blogged for a long time there is some catching up to do, so grab a glass of wine put your feet up and let me bore you. Some of this may be repeated as I don’t have access to what I did previously and at my age I sure can’t remember what I did.

We moved out of the condo and are now happily “living the dream” in the trailer. It’s been a bit stressful. I had my hand surgery as we were packing and am just finished hand therapy. Then I tore a ligament in my back which slowed me up somewhat. I’m taking shots for that (tequila) so I will be better soon.

Rosalie has a problem with her arms going to sleep. I think they’re just anticipating the rest of her body which seems to fall asleep at the drop of a hat. She had an MRI but they found nothing. We think it’s a pinched nerve so are taking steps to make her better. I keep threatening to trade her in but I think she’s past her ‘best by’ date.

It was pretty chilly when we first moved in in April but we had lots of heaters. We would sit in the sun room and watch downloaded Netflix movies. We were dressed in layers of clothing and wrapped in a blanket. Our first night I started laughing as it struck me funny at what we were doing. We’re both totally mad, I’m sure of that. The thing is though, we love it. I think our attitude is the epitome of this site, We’re older but we ain’t dead yet and we can still have a lot of fun.

I’ve had a lot of work to do and at times it seems daunting but I’m getting through it and can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Now that summer’s finally here I’m starting to slow down a bit and enjoy our new life. So far we love it, but this is only half of our trial year. We still have to see if we can live for six months in Mexico. I don’t doubt that we can, but who really knows.

Just after I wrecked my back the truck broke down. These two things decided us that we made a mistake when we bought the boat, so we sold it. I got the truck running after spending a day underneath it, something I swore 30 years ago I wouldn’t do again. Well, I am only 73 after all.
In a future blog I’ll tell you my gold mining story.