Stories from another time

When I was thirteen I moved with my family from Vancouver to live in a small mining community called Bralorne in the interior of British Columbia. It was quite a change for a girl who had spent most of her years in urban Vancouover.  Bralorne was 380 miles and a world away. It had been built as a company town to mine gold in the early 1900s and when we lived there in the 1960s it hadn't changed much at all.                                               

Driving through the mountains around Princeton brought this time back to me very clearly. Although we drove on paved roads yesterday instead of gravel, the landscape and the bridges looked remarkably similar. This isn't a good photograph but if you look closely in the middle you'll see the old wooden bridge across the river. We drove over lots of these bridges on the way to Bralorne and it's been many years since I've seen a bridge like this.

Beside the river was this sign advertising cabins for rent by the night. These also looked familiar to me. Log cabins like this were tucked away here and there on those roads, many of them abandoned by prospectors years ago.

We went to take a look at these and found they've been operating as a motel since the 1930s. The office indicated it was open but there was a sign on the door to contact the owner by phone. We wanted to stay the night but my phone message wasn't answered for a couple of hours, by which time we'd found another place to stay. Too bad! It could have been fun, although I suspect the inside of these might have been pretty dreary.

Princeton is trying hard to modernize and it has fountains and boulevards and gazebos and modern store fronts, but what drew my attention were the vestiges from the earlier days--like these old cars in an auto garage right on the main street.

Here are a couple more images that remind me of the past: a field of mustard beneath dry hills and the wild roses that bloom along the roadsides.

It was a trip into the past yesterday. Today we are in Penticton, a modern, touristy city set between two lovely lakes in the Okanagan district. We're here for a few days and plan to explore the wineries that are the highlight of this area.