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It was Victoria Day in Canada (we have a dead Queen - Americans just have dead guys). Each spring for the May long weekend, thousands of RV's head for the Interior of British Columbia . . . .and we (Keath and I) weren't in one of them. We headed for Logan Lake all right - home of thirty good trout lakes, one of them a puddle in the middle of town - but we checked into the Logan Lake Lodge, hoping to be warm at night. It was Keath's idea and it was Keath who turned the heat off at night and opened the window even though it was still below freezing outside. After a sleepless night, too cold to sleep but not cold enough to actually do something about it, I asked for extra blankets. Breakfast was bacon and eggs and what can you do to abuse them? We'd had a packed lunch from the restaurant the year before, so this time we opted for the grocery store - rye crisp, cheese and sausage. Tunkwa Lake was a zoo, but not yet as crowded as it would become. The population of Logan Lake is 2,600 and I would guess the population at Tunkwa and Leighton Lakes was equal to that. It serves up trout in the 6 lb. range and better and the camp fees are minimal. We fished chironomids like everybody else. Keath took four nice fish, like everybody else. I took none, just to be different. Hoping to tease trout, no matter how small, on a dry, we headed for Walloper Lake (misnamed, for sure). I managed to pick up one four-inch fish on a humpy that was entirely too large. Next day it was my turn to catch fish, on the very same chironomids, but at Logan Lake. Keath's karma I guess. And, we could keep an eye on our motel room while floating the lake. Now dinner in the metropolis of Kamloops, an hour drive away, really wasn't up to our expectation, so we decided to try the local cuisine. First stop was the restaurant in our hotel where we were informed in broken English that we must sit down to read the menu. That didn't go over well with Keath, so we decided to try the other hotel restaurant in town. It was also run by Asians and had Chinese fare on the menu, all predictable stuff. This time round they had beer too, so things were looking up, until the chicken chow mein arrived. The waitress had the nerve to come and ask how the dinner was and I had the nerve to inform her. "What is this?" I said, picking up some debris from the chow mein. "It's supposed to be chicken", she replied. It was in fact chicken, from a can, pressed, sliced and diced and dumped on top of the noodles. The lemon chicken resembled chicken, but that's about all. The deep-fried wonton - oh, never mind. After dinner, we retired to our own hotel's pub, the closest thing to a 60-seat outhouse that you can imagine. But, the music was mediocre and the band played requests (all two of them joined us for a beer during their break - the drum machine refused to sit with us). Keath bought their tape and I bought them a beer, doing what we could to boost the local economy. Now, Logan Lake is losing its copper mine and hoping that tourism will pick up the slack. With some decent marketing and one decent restaurant, that just might work. In the meantime, I suggest you bring your own food and prepare it yourself. Neither of the motels in town have kitchenettes so you might as well book a cabin at Tunkwa Lake. There's nothing worth driving 25 minutes to Logan Lake for.
"There are no steelhead".
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