Stepping into the Past (and eagles!)

Hullo! Today we are at the "real" Morden Colliery! A few weeks back, we were on the other section of the Morden Colliery Regional trail, which had a replica of the pit head... but now we are at the real one.

Impressive, no? It had some restoration work done a couple of years ago.

"It is fascinating! As a budding archaeologist, I am always interested in these sorts of things."

There's a miner's memorial here too because lots of miners died down in those tunnels.

And back in behind, in the bush, is part of the old smokestack from the pump house.

It's pretty cool back here.

There are old building foundations...

And stairs to nowhere...

The forest does claim back it's own very quickly...

We're going to hike down to the river... the trail here is beary black... all from coal stuff!

This trail used to be an old railway... that went from the mine, along this route, over the river, and then over to the ocean. We saw part of it on that last adventure.

There are even old bits of rail track in the bush.

We are almost at the river... wait... are those eagles we hear??

Ah-hah... the river!!

And... OMG... do you see them???? In the trees back there!

Here's a zoomed in shot... eagles!!!

And there's more over there!

So cool!

Every direction we looked, there were eagles in the trees.

It's the tail end of salmon spawning season and we don't see any on the shore... but there must still be some around.

And more eagles over there!

Let's just zoom in... oops... 

I've got a big nose!

Well, that was fun! An archaeological hike AND eagles!!

A Hike through History

A few weeks back we went to the farmer's market in Cedar. That same day (I know... posting delays!)... we went to Morden Colliery Regional Trail. We've been to the old Morden Colliery site before.... Oh... hang on... I have not taken LF there!!!! How is that possible??? Ok... we are going to have to rectify that... and soon!

Anyhow... this is a replica of the pit head at the Morden site... there is a an old rail right-of-way that goes from Morden to where we are now, and then continues to the ocean.

There used to be a bridge for the railway across the river, but there is no bridge now.... so you can't walk from one end to the other. But... there is a nice interpretive display here.

And a map that shows all the coal mining sites all the way up to Cumberland.

Let's seeeee... where are we...

There we are!! See those two orange dots just above, and between, our heads... the lower one is the location of the pithead... and we are at the upper one.

There is talk of building a bridge across the river to connect the two trail bits... but there has been talk for years!

Alright, let's walk!!

I have to say, the fall colours are beary pretty... can you even see LF though?

Fall is his camouflage time!

Beary pretty...

This is Hemer Lake... there are all sorts of trails around here...

It's beary pretty and peaceful here.

It's good to get in a good hike!

We went about 30 minutes down the trail and then turned around to head back to the car. Maybe we'll come back another time and explore farther.

We found some painted rocks on the trail! This looks like a bat...

Cute!

This bank is covered with licorice ferns....

We could get lost in here!

The cottonwoods are so pretty at this time of year.

There were some farms along the way and a few horses.

They didn't come to say hello... we need to keep carrots in our pockets...