This is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, Monday, October 14th being the actual date, so it's lovely fall weather for Sat. and Sun., with rain predicted for Monday. Saturday morning my wife, daughter, and I met MagniAesir and his daughter, as well as Thomas Steenburg, for one of our regular breakfast meets to discuss news in the Sasquatch field, and generally solve all the world's problems over coffee and eggs. There's nothing new to report regarding sightings in our local area, so talk was mostly about the present hunting season, and who had plans to go where.
Saturday evening I invited my oldest boy, Steve, to join me on Sunday afternoon for a drive up the Chilliwack River valley to one of the feeder creeks that is a spawning area for the current Coho run, hoping to see lots of fish, and maybe some wildlife coming to feed on the spawners. The road along the main channel of the river was lined with parked cars for most of the 15 km or so to our turn off, with hundreds of fishermen hip deep in the cold water, trying their luck. Our chosen spot is a designated spawning reserve, so we had it pretty much to ourselves, as no fishing is allowed there. We parked a km off the main road, and went for a 2 km walk along the Trans Canada hiking trail, which parallels the creek for quite a distance. We saw quite a few fish, some looking fresh and strong, and some showing the white patches of skin indicating they were nearing the end of their last journey. There were no dead fish littering the banks of the channels yet, so it's still early in the run , and not yet a huge attractant to the local bears and other carrion feeders.
Back at my 4x4, we decided to look over the rest of the old logging trails in this creek valley, and followed a couple of the many offshoots to their ends, or as far as I cared to push the truck through the heavy alder scrub along one of them, but other than some great scene5ry, we saw nothing more of interest. We did flush a few grouse, but saw no game bigger than chipmunks. As the sun dropped behind the peaks to our west, and the temperature dropped along with it, we turned around and headed back home for supper, satisfied with our day outdoors in Beautiful BC.