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North Thompson River
Kamloops, B.C.
I had to go back a bit into the archives for I haven't been able to get out much recently and what I do have from this past week seems to be all photos of fences, ducks or deer. I've got more of those to share but I didn't want to overload them. :-)
and not enough bridges."
-- Sir Isaac Newton
Who knew that the guy who discovered gravity was also a political philosopher?
This is a view of the railway bridge across the South Thompson River. Mt. Peter and Mt. Paul are in the background.
McArthur Island
Kamloops, B.C.
I took a walk in the snow today and was amazed to find when I got home that you could see the falling snow in my pictures. It's my first time taking pictures in the snow with a good camera.
My two favourite shots have almost the same frame but a different focus -- one on the trunks and heaviest branches of the trees and one on the falling snow and needles/scales on the finer branches.
Mt. Paul and Mt. Peter
North Thompson River
Kamloops, B.C.
I live a few blocks from this view and have taken umpteen versions of this shot in the last year. I've always been disappointed with the results for the photos all seemed to lack something. Now I know what it was! Clouds.
Only the hardy plants survive the winter but every winter has its spring.
Yes, friends, that is sagebrush in the foreground but I promise it will be the last picture of it! (for a while, anyway).
Marmot enjoying the sun
It was Day 10 of self-isolating. I hadn't stepped outside of my condo the whole time. So I was ready to break out, buy a few groceries and enjoy the sunshine for a bit.
I took a short drive , a short walk and enjoyed the sunshine just like this Marmot was doing. (my gosh, has it only been a month since I started doing this self-isolation thing? It feels like forever).
The day i took this photo, which was back in January, I had spent a long time watching a variety of water fowl landing and taking off from the river. There were Canada geese, trumpeter swans and several types of ducks. The swans were by far the most accomplished at both landing and take-off.
No surprise, really, that they were the best with those powerful wings of theirs. Two flaps and they would be nicely airborne. Their wing span is incredible to see. I'd estimate that this pair had spans of 6 - 7 feet. The largest male swans can have spans of up to 10 feet.
Through the veil of the grasses we get just a peek at the Thompson River and reflections from the other bank.
In Explore 2017-09-27
North Thompson River
at Jensen Island
I had a late start getting out with my camera and was ticked off that the sun was already gone from this part of the valley, only lighting the hills on the other side of the river. Then I decided the blue light as sundown approached was nice and, besides, those trees were almost bright enough to light up the place.
At Tranquille looking toward Mt. Peter and Mt. Paul
As I took this shot I was struck by the thought that this was like two disparate worlds -- the cool pastels of the snow-capped mountains and the warm, earthy vegetation at Tranquille.
Happy fenced Friday!
I've now photographed this fence in all four seasons. And, as one of my Flickr friends has suggested, will probably be making a composite photo of the four images.
Kamloops Lake -- looking toward the city of Kamloops, B.C.
There was a fierce wind blowing when I took this shot. It whipped the grasses around, sometimes nearly flattened the sagebrush and made the lake very choppy. The lake is striped with the cloud shadows across it.
The two distinct blue peaks are Mt. Peter and Mt. Paul located at the far side of the city of Kamloops, 22 km away. If you zoom in on the left side of Battle Bluff down by the lake's edge you will see the railway tunnel still in use. I'd never seen it before myself as it can only be seen from the lake.
Despite my caption and the rather cocky tilt of the head, this guy was not at all aggressive. He just seems that way. :-) Probably a function of how much I was zoomed in on him. I'd describe him as having been very curious and perhaps a more real caption might have been "You got any food?"
"Marmots are large rodents (the heaviest members of the squirrel family) with characteristically short but robust legs, enlarged claws well adapted to digging, stout bodies, and large heads and incisors to quickly process a variety of vegetation.
Marmots typically live in burrows, often within rockpiles, and hibernate there through the winter. Most marmots are highly social and use loud whistles to communicate with one another, especially when alarmed."
McArthur Island Park
I do always feel a bit bad for the ducks when their pond freezes over every winter because they always seem so sad and lost. But I gotta say, they can be a bloody nuisance too. :-/ They mill about all over the small road that goes past their pond. This day I spent about 15 minutes shooing them off so that cars could drive through.
When I returned to my car a while later I was surprised that there were very few of them on the road. Then I looked over to the left. And there they were... marching toward me mainly in single file. The line of them was about three times longer than shown here.
“Only mountains can feel the frozen warmth of the sun through snow's gentle caress on their peaks”
-- Munia Khan
View from McArthur Island,
Kamloops, B.C.
Most of the river now has a small strip which is free of ice. It's rather fascinating following along the undulating 'S' shape which is the open water. It seems to meander back and forth between the river banks with no apparent reason or pattern.
In Explore 2017-02-05
North Thompson River,
Kamloops, B.C.
In Explore 2017-04-30
I have next to no time for photography currently so the few times when I can snatch 45 minutes or so to take a few shots become very precious. If those times happen to fall when the weather is nice, as was the case here, I am even more happy.
I just loved this view of the river, framed as it was by trees and on the left by a wood carving (one of a trio, the other two farther to the left of the frame). I've taken many shots of the three carved cedar poles but have never had any I was pleased with. The carvings were done by a U.K. sculptor named Giles Kent. That the city of Kamloops would commission a sculptor from the U.K. is very bizarre seeing as we have many gifted First Nations wood carvers locally. I mean no offense to any of my friends from the U.K. :-)
Mission Flats
Kamloops, B.C.
It was a lovely day, cool but sunny, and everybody and their dog was out for a walk on the other side of the river. There weren't really that many people but everybody did have a dog with them. If you zoom in you can see a bald eagle sitting on the ice in the middle of the river.
Thompson River
Kamloops, BC
I seem to have had winter songs in my mind lately, hence the title of this image, If only this was actually the shade of winter! I fell in love with this sky. It reminded me of the soft pastels of a watercolour painting.
This is kind of a perfect picture to illustrate early winter in Kamloops. Perfect with respect to the elements that is, not trying to blow my own horn about my photography skills. The elements showing Kamloops are a light skiff of snow, golden brown grasses, train tracks, a bit of sagebrush down by the tracks, bridges, the Thompson River and Mount Paul & Peter.
There was a bit of haze but it wasn't smoke. I took this picture two months ago before I went on a little vacation and haven't taken a picture in Kamloops since due to smoke from wild fires. I hope I can soon!
Happy Fence Friday!
Meeting of the rivers, Kamloops BC
-- the South Thompson is in the foreground, the North Thompson is midground
The word Kamloops is the English translation of the Secwepemc word Tk'emlúps, which means “where the rivers meet”, and has been the home of the Tk'emlupsemc, the “people of the confluence”, for centuries.
Zoom in to see a few of the wild Trumpeter swans which winter in Kamloops.
Okay, technically it's not a fence. It's a railing on a bridge. But it sure looks like a fence here, built to corral and hold back that wild sky!
Tree fungus
McArthur Island Park,
Kamloops B.C.
Fungus. Eeeew. The very word sounds kind of ugly. But, you know, on a foggy winter day where most everything was covered in snow, this fungus was a bright and cheery spot of colour.
.... slough! (pronounced slew).
This charming waterway is called the MacArthur Island Slough. For those not familiar with the term slough, it can mean either a swampy bog or a side channel which is only sporadically filled with water. While this slough is sometimes the former, in this picture it definitely earns the nicer definition.
The water levels do fluctuate quite a bit seasonally which means that some autumns there are only scattered puddles in swampy ground. Which in turn means there is not a lot of ice there in winter. In a good year though it freezes over and kids play hockey on it. It's also fun to watch ducks come in for a landing on the ice.
City of Kamloops, looking toward Mounts Peter and Paul
Mount Peter is the one shrouded in clouds. Mount Paul has the smooth shale face right in the middle of the photo. In this image they look like one continuous thing but from other angles you can see they are distinct peaks.
Mount Peter has an elevation of 3600 feet (1097 m) but since the valley has an elevation of 1400 feet, the mountain has an actual rise of ... well, you do the math! Kamloops is surrounded by hills which flatlanders tend to call mountains but Kamloopsians don't. Only Peter and Paul get that name.
Trying to escape the heat, I took a half hour drive up into the hills to a year round recreation area. Full of trails but otherwise undeveloped, it's a lovely area of near wilderness.
In the winter it has snowshoeing and cross-country trails. In the summer there are hiking and biking trails. And, yes, it seemed cooler there.
Along the Thompson River,
Kamloops, B.C.
The sea is mainly long grasses, a few tumbleweeds and, yes, just a wee bit of sagebrush.
I liked this image in colour but when I tried it in monochrome I was wowed with the drama of it.
Happy Fence Friday!
Kamloops, B.C.
Snow always seems to accentuate colours. What might normally seem to be a dull sky appears as a delicate wash of pastels. Trees which might regularly be either green or brown seem to have a great variety of colours.
North Thompson River
Kamloops BC
This is one of my favourite views of the North Thompson. You can see here that this stretch of the river really meanders a lot. The nearest bit of water, this side of the bridge, is actually an oxbow (a meander that got cut off from the actual flow of the river). Most of the year this is a shallow wetland and a protected riparian habitat.
Around the end of May at high water, the wetland will become part of the river again for a few weeks, The snowpack up in the mountains is at a very high level this year and so flooding is predicted. The City of Kamloops is making preparations for flooding and have advised property owners along the river to start making sandbags and other preparations now. Social distancing will mean that neighbours won't be working together on such tasks when it comes down to the crunch.
I like to think this is how the bridge looked in 1936 which was when it was built. I knew as I took this shot ten days ago that I would end up doing a vintage version of it. Imagine this shot without the buildings, telephone poles and the streetlight and I do believe that is exactly how it would have looked.
“If watching a bridge is much more exciting than crossing that bridge, then you can be sure that it is a very beautiful bridge!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan
I love this old bridge, what can I say? It was good to get out for a wee bit today and take some photographs. It was still pretty cold though and the roads were in awful shape.
You might get a chuckle out of the sign in this shot. In case you can't read it after a double-click, it says "DANGER : Swim at your own risk".
i've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all
~~ Joni Mitchell
At first I thought these clouds were laying down another bit of snow on the hilltops but then I decided it was just an illusion. :-)
Thompson River
Kamloops, BC
I remember clearly how magical the light seemed on this morning. Perhaps it had as much to do with the joy of being outside my condo apartment and exploring new vistas in the fresh morning air as it had to do with the light. Or perhaps it was a combination of the two. :-)
Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons every where
I've looked at clouds that way
--- Joni Mitchell
Tranquille
Kamloops, BC
For the imaginative, the cluster of fence posts and barbed wire make it look like the fence is to bar access to the buildings in the distance. That's not actually the case though, the fence is on a cattle ranch and the buildings are farther than they appear. They are some of the buildings built in 1911 to house a tuberculosis sanatorium.
This may look like it was a warm sunny day. Sunny it was, but warm it was not. We are having our first cold snap of the season. It was -6 C and felt damn cold!
Jensen Island bridge
Kamloops, B.C.
I expect that there is a great deal more water under the bridge than when this photo was taken two months ago. This photo was in a file I keep of images that I deem worthy of posting on Flickr. Eventually the file becomes too large and unwieldy and/or fuil of out of season photos so occasionally I have to cull it by putting some images in an archive.
I couldn't bear to relegate this one to the archives though so I have posted it! It has me curious to see what changes two months have brought so I shall be going out that way sometime this week. I shall post a shot with the changes. I predict the most radical change will be the water level in the river. Changes other than that will include: no snow on the top of the hill straight ahead, leaves on the deciduous trees (that actually may make quite a difference) and the hillsides will have a greenish tinge.
Ranch along Paul Lake Road
Kamloops, B.C.
This is one of my favourite places to photograph. Since I hadn't taken any pictures there since April, I decided it was about time!
Halston Bridge
Kamloops, B.C.
Railroad enthusiasts might enjoy some information about the railway bridge just beyond the road bridge. Zoom in and you can see the two black towers of the railway bridge. Built in 1914, this was the first vertical lift railway bridge in Canada and was built to accommodate the steam boats which plied the river. The span between the towers, approximately 93 feet (28 m) could raise up to a height of 55 feet (17 m). Though the bridge is still in use, the vertical lift hasn't operated since 1937.
Crazy Tuesday "Clouds"
Man made clouds are also known as emissions from smoke stacks. The pulp mill claims that the emissions are mainly steam. Yeah, suuuuuure, that is why the particulate level in the "steam" gets regularly measured.
Paul Lake,
Kamloops, B.C.
This is a little stream that empties out of Paul Lake and runs through this little marshland. It was pouring rain when I took this shot but at least I did manage to get a useable shot. My pictures of the lake pretty much all had raindrops on the lens, :-/
North Thompson River
Kamloops BC
Ever notice on a sunny winter's day just how bright the blue of the sky is?
Thompson River
Looking toward Battle Bluff
Kamloops BC
This picture was taken about a month ago. What a difference a month makes! It was still kind of summery weather then. And now, we have snow coming in a couple of days! :-( If the snow does materialize it will be the earliest that I remember for first snowfall.