Friday, July 1 to Sunday, July 3, 2022 (ATV/BC Annual Poker Ride, Logan Lake, BC - PART 2)

WISHING OUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS A VERY SAFE AND HAPPY CANADA DAY!

The village of Logan Lake is celebrating it's 50th Anniversary all weekend with all sorts of activities that started yesterday. It was delayed 2 years due COVID in 2020 and last summers wildfires. Last August the entire town of nearly 2000 people were ordered to evacuate as the wildfires burned to the edge of town, but luckily no structures were destroyed. Today...Canada Day (July 1) they are having a parade through town. With all the festivities, there are no formal ATV activities (i.e. guided rides or meals) but a number of folks are decorating their 4-wheelers and going in the parade. Since you must trailer your ATV up to a staging area in town, we are not participating. But I am going to watch the parade with Debbie...leaving Steve and Greg back to work security and just hang out.

Debbie and Greg live in Logan Lake, so Debbie suggested we stop by their place so I could put a load of laundry on while we are out and about in town...perfect! Thanks! They have a lovely home in a newer subdivision with a great view from their back deck. To the left (south), I could see Mamit Lake in the distance, but not so much in this photo...

To the right I could see just how close the wildfires came to the community last year...

After a tour of their house, I put a load of laundry on and we headed to the "downtown" area to park and find our spot on a grass knoll to watch the parade. It was a cute, small town parade with emergency vehicles leading the way with sirens blaring...

RCMP...

Lots of candy was being thrown out to the kids watching...

And the ATV's!

Taking photos from inside the side x side...

Cindy passing out candy...she even had butterscotch candy for the adults in the crowd!

And that was the parade! It only took about 20 minutes to pass by us...but it brought out lots of families to watch. Great community spirit here in Logan Lake!

Debbie and I ran a couple of errands and then went back to her place where we chilled in the shade while we waited for my laundry to dry. It really wasn't long though, and we were back down at the field by about 1:30 or so.

Meanwhile with the arrival of most participants for tomorrows Poker Run Steve launched his drone for a video tour of camp... 

Drone photo from near the entrance on highway 97C...

The rest of the afternoon was spent hanging out with the folks in the tents. Lots of people were milling around and putting bids on the silent auction items.

The daily 50/50 tickets went on sale at 4:00 and were a hot item! Doug and Gary started to go around selling them but only got as far as the t-shirt table where they were bombarded with folks scrambling for tickets...I ended up helping Doug separate the tickets...

That evening, a bunch of us gathered outside of Chris/Jane and Don/Suzanne's trailers...a little impromptu get together. Starting bottom left and going around the circle...Gary, Mark, Roz, Suzanne, Don, Jane, Mike, Chris, Dave, me, Rita, Mario and Doug...

From the other end...(Steve always manages to get a picture of me talking...with my hands! LOL)

Saturday (July 2) and the main event...the Poker Ride!

People line up and they let about a half dozen or so leave with breaks between each group...

Steve took a short drone video of of some of the riders heading out for the Poker Run...

Steve with Station 3 leader Mike, waiting for Greg and Jackie before heading off....

Thumbs up...ready to roll! Greg (Debbie's husband is riding my quad)...

And I am riding in their side x side with Debbie! Marilee (riding her own quad), Debbie and me...

And our group is off!

First Poker hand stop...

So the way the Poker Run works is there are 5 Poker Stations within the 71 km/44 mile course. You buy a blank poker card/s for $25 each. The cards have 5 rows with 5 spaces for your hands drawn. 

Lots of steep, rocky, rough parts on the trail...those riding a quad had a good work out!

And lots of dusty parts too!

Along with some beautiful scenery!

I know Marilee, her husband Wally, and their friend are in front of us but I can't tell you who is who!

Second Poker Station...

Debbie drawing her hand...

Meanwhile, manning Station 3 with Steve are Greg, Mike, and Jackie. Steve took this picture after they got all set up...waiting for their first arrivals...

After picking their poker hands many riders remained at Station 3 to have lunch...

Another arrival to Station 3 with another in the distant dust...

Coastal mountains in the distance...

In the distance we spotted Station 3 where Steve is...

Greg and Mike manned the buckets while Steve and Jackie wrote down and initialed the cards drawn. 52 clear plastic 35 mm film canisters contain a card, the bucket is shaken and a card canister picked...

Station 4...

Almost back to camp...where the 5th Poker hand station is. Now we will just have to wait for the results!

A great ride on a beautiful day! 

I also took a Relive video of our GPS track...if interested, click here.

As soon as Steve got home, he immediately got to work loading the quads back into the truck. Rain is in the forecast tonight and tomorrow morning and we want to be pretty well packed up tonight so that we can leave early tomorrow morning. The field we are in gets pretty muddy...and we don't want to get stuck!

(Note...for some reason, I neglected to take any pictures of the rest of the festivities...😕)

It was about 5:00 when everyone gathered at the tents...it was time for the live auction! Bob Stewart did a great job auctioning off tons of stuff that had been donated. While this was going on, the poker hands were being checked. So after the auction, the winners were announced...no luck for the 2 cards we bought! But the prizes were great...1st prize was just under $2,000, 2nd prize was just over $1100 and 3rd prize was over $700 (these amounts are from memory...but reflect that they were all great prizes!) 

Oh...almost forgot to mention, I won a small 2 Qt air fryer that I had been bidding on in the silent auction (thanks for conceding, Roz...we had quite a bidding war going on LOL!)

We had just finished our dinner under the tent, barbequed burgers with potato salad, both were delicious!...when we noticed some dark ominous clouds coming our way. 

So we made a beeline to the trailer to get everything put away! We managed to get the mat, chairs and anything else that was laying around, put away... just in time! A major thunder storm rolled through with lots of wind, heavy rain and some hail!

Sunday (July 3) morning we hitched the trailer up and after big hugs and goodbyes to everyone we were off just after 8:30. What a fabulous week we have had...kudos to all of the organizers and volunteers! Good job! Also thanks to Steve's security team, Aaron, Walley, Wayne, Lance, Greg and Doug for volunteering to help out! 

Our first stop was at the sani-dump, just a short distance before entering the town. We were pleasantly surprised to only find a three rigs ahead of us! (Thought we would be #50 in line. Steve 😂) So we had the tanks dumped and hit the road less than an hour later. This time we continued on highway 97D through town. This is Logan lake...there is a municipal campground at the far end of the lake, along with a golf course...

Looking back, is beautiful Maggs Park with the recreation centre in the distance...

Pictures on the outskirts of town at the turnoff to the Logan Lake Municipal Campground and Meadow Creek Golf Club of just how close the wildfires last year came. BTW, it was one year ago yesterday that we were evacuated from Tunkwa Provincal Park, leaving our trailer, boat and some of our camping accessories behind.

Once we hit highway 5 (the Coquihalla), we headed south. We had an uneventful drive...other than lots and lots of rain and heavy fog as we continued toward the summit! 

The Fraser River, again....the water is very high!

It was still drizzling when we pulled into Peace Arch RV Park...but luckily, it basically ended up being more like a bit of a mist by the time we got unhitched. Back to where we left one week ago...time to get all set up again!

Did I say we had a great week? It was a blast! Thanks again, Logan Lake ATV Club and ATV/BC!