In The Wilds of B.C...and CollyWobbles in a WigWam...

So. Mom has been promising to get All Caught Up with our Epic Adventure. Mostly she has been telling stories about The Bastards and about me, Moyo, but they have not been stories getting you all up to date with our Epic Adventure in The Noahbago. So here is Some News.

After we left Malakwa in The 'Bago, we headed North. We went through lots of pretty towns and Got Lost in one of them, too.

Dad said Mom is The Very Worst Navigator.

Mom said Well, I try. But it's terrifically hard to navigate in my sleep. (which is what she does a lot of when they travel in The Noahbago. Mom says it feels like a Giant Floating bed. And so she sleeps. Once she even almost fell right out of her seat when she went to sleep. And then she got mad because Dad snorted with laughter at her.)

This is me sitting waiting for dad to figure out where we Should Have Been Going when we missed the right turn because Mom was seat-napping...

I told you a little bit about that but what's important about it is that we got to spend a Long Time with our friends who we know from Tanzania which is in East Africa. They came to Canada about six years ago and have Just become Canadian Citizens and we went to visit with them at their home in Quesnel.

On the road to our friends in Quesnel...

Also? We found a place that made Mom Fall About Laughing. She thought it was Just The Funniest Thing. She went all around taking photographs of it, and then we went to have breakfast at a place that used to be an Old Apple Packing House. It was So Old and So Interesting.

Here's what made Mom Snort...make the pictures slide so you can see exactly what.

Most especially did Mom snort about the second view of that place. She was Delighted by the Old and Fall Down Garagey Thing. She waxed lyrical about How Perfect! Just the Sort of Creepy Joint one NEEDS at such a motel. Especially one with Such a Fabulously Entertaining Name...

This is the old apple factory place and where we had breakfast...

So then, after all this snorting and breakfast and stuff, we got to Quesnel and to our Good Friends.

They have got a Beautiful Home there. It's on a farm and it's like an old farm house with this Amazing veranda all around three sides. And guess what? They have got two dogs who became my friends. First there is Dagr. He is a Bear Catching Dog and he has a THICK coat and BIG feet. And sometimes he has DEAF ears. Especially if he has treed a squirrel. Also? He LIKES the snow and ice and stuff. He prefers to be outside. It was fun watching him try to break the ice which grew on all the puddles in the fields and roads.

Look at the Patterns the ice makes when the puddles freeze...

The other pup was my BIG friend even though she is SMALL. Lila. She is what is called a French Tin and she has a face that looks like she ran into a wall. Mom said she loved Lila's lips because they were all fat and fluffy.

She has BIG eyes and even though she is small? She has a very fierce heart and she thinks she is a great Dane. Or a St. Bernard.

And she and I liked to play. We played Tug-of-War. Sometimes I let her win and sometimes I just dragged her all over the floor. That was good fun.

Then, we also went into The Wilds of B.C. with our friends. And with Dagr. And Lilia. We went out into the mountains and the trees. We went to a small town called Wells. And then we went even passed Wells.

But in Wells, Mom found a shop she REALLY liked. It's called Frog In The Bog. And the building is painted a bright green. Actually? Mom liked the whole of Wells because almost all the houses there are painted a bright colour and Mom loves bright colours. She says that it makes the dreariness of all the snow and ice and stuff look almost Wonderful Fun. So she liked Wells and she liked Frog In The Bog.

Mostly, though? Because I know my Mom? I think she liked the NAME of that shop. Mom seems to find anything that has a reference even vaguely lavatorial hysterically entertaining. And so she found it funny that the frog was IN THE BOG.

Dad said You do know that they are not so much talking about a lavatory, Mom, as the marsh around them?

Mom said Let's not get all environmental, Dad. This Frog is IN the BOG. And that's just Very Entertaining!

So we would have to go to visit Boggy Froggy every time we went by. It's a cool shop - it has big, warm and beautiful jerseys and coats and hats and mittens and scarves and stuff in it. Also some pretty good coffee. And cake. Cake is always excellent.

Then we drove on even further into the mountains and the trees until we came to Kruger Lake and there Mom and Dad's friends have got a little Log Cabin Camp right on the very edge of that lake. And so we stayed there for about a month and it was wonderful. Here is a SlideyShow of Life In Camp so you can look at the ones you want to look at.

Dad chopped wood and made the stove in the cabin glow with fire and it was toasty cozy. We even let The Bastards out and they would run from The Bago to the cabin and then spend the day hanging around there. It was the first time they ever saw snow and I don't think that they liked it THAT much. There was a lot of Paw Shaking going on.

JesusJones found the Best Place in the cabin and spent most of his days there. And the other thing those Cats did? They caught some mice. Mostly it was JoJo who was catching them because JesusJones was napping under the fireplace.

I had great fun out there. I trawled around eating stuff that made Mom make gagging noises and I barked at what might have been bears in the woods but probably wasn't. At least that's what Dad said when Mom suggested we might have been surrounded by bears. On all sides. Especially when she had to pull on her boots and spend fourteen hours getting all her layers of clothing on so she could trudge out across the frozen tundra to the OUTHOUSE.

Which was about 40 metres away but to listen to Mom it was like doing the Iditarod every time she needed to ablute.

She had a lot to say, as well, about the fact that there was a chill breeze which had snuck its way through the boards of that BOG and would feather her nethers.

Mom said I'm probably going to get CollyWobbles In My Wigwam from that wind.

Dad just rolled his eyes at her.

I just sat there and wondered what on earth CollyWobbles might be and if they were Catching. I didn't even begin to contemplate what Mom's Wigwam might have been, because I KNOW my Mom and so it was definitely going to be a rude part of her anatomy.

She said It's almost enough to make a ....you guessed it! YES!

She said it was almost enough to make a monkey bite his grandmother. So we had monkeys and their grandmothers out there with the bears. At least according to Mom.

On one of the days I found a MOOSE ANTLER! That was brilliant fun and it made my teeth all sharp and shiny when I gnawed on it. And because it wasn't poo, Mom didn't have too much muttering to make about me being a Brave Camp Dog Gnawing On a Moose Antler. It was like starring in my Very Own Film...ROOTS: Canis Lupus. I could Just Feel myself becoming Wolf Dog Moyo when I ate that antler.

And sometimes I would go out on the jetty in the lake. I would go with Lila and we would look at the water. Sometimes I even went in to water even though it was pretty cold.

It was Very Lovely out at Kruger Camp even if Mom worried about CollyWobbles and it's a part of our Epic Adventure that we were SO lucky to have had. We send Mom and dad's friends, Maj and Guy, so much love for letting us have that adventure with them. Also? We thank Dagr. And Lila.

Some more Kruger Lake camp photos for if you are Interested.

That last picture? It's a MOOSE that Mom made. She was supposed to be making supper and what did she do instead? She made a moose out of tin foil and masking tape. Because that's just the sort of thing that Mom does.

See, said Mom, when we all moaned because supper was late. See, I was making this moose for Steve. Because I have you, Moyo, as my emotional support animal. And Steve? Steve needs an emotional support creature - so a moose seemed a fantastic idea.

(Steve was someone who came to visit at Kruger Lake Camp and if there was one thing that we all learned from him it was this: Life is Beautiful. It really, truly is. See, Steve has a scary cancer and yet he smiles all the time and he looks all about him and he loves what he sees. And when Steve ate desserts? He would go WOW!! and tuck in. It made Mom want to invent the Most Amazing Desserts In The Whole Wide World. Just to hear Steve say WOW!)

(Mom got me a Dagr Cecil from the Value Village when we left Quesnel. It was amazing that, right there, in the Cecil basket at Value Village, there was a Dagr. I was sad there was no Lila, but a Dagr was a good Cecil to have. Even if I have now eaten that Dagr Cecil's Butt. Which I told you about in the story before this. When Mom ignored me. Which made me kill that Dagr Cecil just a little bit.)