The personal and professional website of Douglas Van Bossuyt
I motored along British Columbia Highway 12 between the Trans Canada Highway and Lillooet before breakfast. This is an entertaining piece of asphalt to ride a motorcycle on and was only completed in 1953. Even this close to Vancouver, this part of British Columbia was pretty wild not that long ago.
Down below the highway is the Fraser River. That river was running cold and gray while I rode along it.
After a great ride through southern British Columbia, I stopped for the night at a little free campground in the community of Spences Bridge along the Thompson River. The Trans Canada Highway cuts through this river gorge as does the main line of the Canadian Pacific Railway. Westbound trains go down the river on the opposite bank while eastbound trains rumble up the river on the side of the bank I camped on.
It was a little dicey getting through sand and very deep, very loose gravel to this campsite.
Down on the gravel bar on the Thompson River.
Looking downriver toward where the majority of the town of Spences Bridge is located.
This is a video of a huge Canadian Pacific Railway freight train rumbling down the river toward Vancouver. It was over four minutes long and the train most certainly wasn’t moving slowly.
Just above my campsite and on the other side of the highway is the eastbound railroad tracks. Every 15 to 30 minutes all night long a big train like this one would rumble by. For a train aficionado, this was an EXCELLENT place to spend the night.
Over a long holiday weekend, I decided to go do something a little different. I hadn’t been out of the country yet this year so I decided to take my Honda Pacific Coast motorcycle to British Columbia for the weekend. Canada is just a few hours away from Oregon yet this is the first time I’ve ever taken a vehicle to the Great White North. Why did I never do this before?!
The first stop after I went over the border was at the National Research Council Canada’s Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory. I really like checking out different interesting sites used for astronomy and other space-related things.
This is a really interesting little facility. It is much smaller than the Goldstone Deep Space Network facilities but no less impressive. Rather than only talking to spacecraft, this facility does many different types of research.
This big thing is the CHIME telescope. It is mapping hydrogen in the universe.
This is part of a tunable long baseline antenna setup.
All of these poles are from a 22 MHz telescope that has been offline for many years. It helped map the universe at one point in the past.
The main operations building and the big dish.
Looking down at another telescope array.
One of the two solar trackers at the facility.
Back out with my motorcycle getting ready to go.
This is a really cool facility and well worth the visit.