In many places that we visit, there’s no big STORY, where I can lead you through a day spent on an arduous trail, or share our white knuckles during a hair-raising 4WD trek. Sometimes, there are just glimpses of things in the area. This post is just such a collection, a potpourri of mostly un-related snapshots. Each pic gets anywhere from a caption to a paragraph, depending. Several shots are from our guided tour of the turn-of-the-(20th)century canning operation (now a museum).

Stuff we haven’t seen in the States: A quarter-fed lockbox on a supermarket cart. Return the cart and chain it into the queue, you get your quarter back. Roll the cart out of the lot, and the wheels lock. Pretty clever.

Wild iris in the rain forest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cool wine-glass chandeliers at the Cow Bay Café.

 

Snappy-looking Canada Post public mailboxes.

Liquid-fuel-powered flat-iron on a museum floor. (Gasoline? Alcohol?)

Ceremonial Head-gear worn by First Nations (that’s Canadian for “Indian” or U.S. “Native American”).

Humor in the rain-forest.

Massive disc-brake rotors on old rusty railroad car axles.

One of the few metric-English reminders we ever saw, just off the ferry terminal.

Boats in dry-dock at Port Edwards, just down the road from our camp site. We walk here in the evenings to marvel at what amazing contraptions men will take out to sea.

This bedraggled sloop was left in the water maybe a little too long. The rudder is nearly detached, and the sea barnacles and weeds have eaten an entire layer off the keel. No sign of any refurbishing or rebuild work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Processing buildings and worker housing at the old cannery. A bleak place on a bleak day. Europeans, Chinese, Japanese, and First Nation people all worked here and were likely glad for their jobs. But the conditions were unimaginable to us today – foul weather gear (rain hat, rain coat, rain coveralls) was worn by all processing personnel, due to the unending splash of ankle-deep fish guts and pieces. Un-needed viscera, heads and tails were dumped straight down under the buildings and left for the tides to sweep away. Must have been a whole universe of crabs under those piers.

Weathered-out dock and processing shed at the old Cannery Museum.

Large patch of skunk cabbage on the Butze Rapids Trail. Apparently it reeks too much to be useful as food. Too bad, you could Hoagie up eight pounds of chicken salad in one leaf.

Automatic salmon trimmer-gutter at the Cannery Museum. It could spit out one cleaned fish per second; the discards went on the floor.

Empty container ship sitting at anchor in Prince Rupert harbor. The tiny speck off the bow is a 35-foot fishing boat speeding past. It takes the little boat over a full minute to motor past the ship.

For many decades, millions of cans of salmon were produced at the cannery. You just wouldn’t believe the gruesome processes, or the hardships endured by the workers. Enough to gag a maggot. But it was the area’s major industry for over 40 years.

Karin and me (Karin is the good-looking one), posed in front of a gnarled set of twisted trunks in the rain forest (Butze Rapids Trail). Gollum is hiding behind the stump. You know how camera-shy he is.

Any time we are tempted to think our lives are difficult, all we have to do is look at a little history and see what those who went before us had to put up with. By today’s standards, our forebears lived cruel and inhuman existences. I wonder what future generations will think of our “travails” of the 21st century? “You mean they actually prepared meals on a STOVE??? How barbaric!!” – – or something like that.

 

• Miles driven (Howie): 2,336
• Miles driven (Ralph): 560
• Days traveling: 22
• Miles from home: 1,854