Well... I have. It's very odd actually. You know how when you're a kid you always go over to grandma and grandpa's house and grandma makes you lots of pie and good eats, you play games and spend tons of time together? Well, at least most of us have done that at some point in time.
For me, it was an annual trip (sometimes more than that) to good ol' Barriere BC with my aunt, my cousin, and my older brother. My dad, stepmom, younger brother, and little sister had come down there as well, sometimes at the same times, but usually I did the trip with my aunt and cousin. Even if my parents did go down at the same time, I would still go in my aunts car, it was less crowded and much more comfortable.
Each year in the summer we would jump in the car, drive for 8 friggen hours all the way to ho-dunk town Barriere, BC. We would bring this game with us every time. I have no idea what it was actually called, but it was a little box (the same idea as backgammon) and you would roll two dice. You had the numbers 1 through 9 on the top, and the numbers would flip down. You would roll the dice and say you rolled a 2 and a 5... you could either put down the 7, or any combination of numbers that equaled whatever you rolled.
It was the same as this but without the wine and a little less ancient:
We'd play that game for hours, I'd usually pop a gravol or two and pass out for at least a good 4-6 hours of the trip. It was a boring drive, especially when we drove through McBride. Talk about NOTHING to see. Ugh.
Welcome to Barriere.
My grandparents used to live in PG when I was very young, but moved to Barriere at some point. I was still really young. This sign in the picture above is the sign you pass through if you start heading towards Kamloops. You head away from the esso station. My grandma used to live just down the road from that gas station and we would quite often go there for candy and such. It used to have a trianglular peaked roof but clearly this picture is more recent and it's been redone.
Yep... a whole lotta nothin! My grandparents bought another house and moved into it. Their old house used to be by train tracks and I remember being woken up in the mornings by the sound of the trains. They were so damn noisy it's no wonder they moved. The only other thing I really remember about that house is the slate walk way around the side of the house. I used to break chunks of it off and bring it home to keep. I gave a piece to my mom because it was a "sparkly rock" and I think she may even still have it. She kept a lot of the useless shit we gave her, who knows why.
The rest of my memories of Barriere were in Gramma and Grampa's new house. It had a huuuge back yard, and a very big garden that took up the end closest to the fence. My cousin Riane and I destroyed that garden numerous times. We would pick all of the carrots until we got a real good one (aka the biggest one or an oddly shaped one) and would throw all the shitty ones over the fence and into the neighbours yard.
I spent years visitting that house. All the way up until I was about 15/16 years old. They were the best trips. We would spend a couple days where we would drive into Kamloops. It was only about 45 minutes away from Barriere. We would always go to the wildlife park, and then the waterslides were next door. I still say that that waterslide park was the best one in BC.
It was an outdoor waterpark. It had 4 huge long twisty blue tunnel water slides, 2 little kiddy water slides, a couple hot tubs, and two really tall steep water slides that you could race people down. It was a BLAST. I would go back in a heart beat even at my age now.
It would take us about 5 minutes to get to the top of the waterslide, less than a minute to get down, and then we'd do it all over again.
That park is no longer open. I guess it closed down quite a few years ago now and all that's left is a shitty overgrown ugly looking park. It's unfortunate and such a waste. Why they never found a way to reopen them is beyond me. The place was always packed in the summers, but perhaps that business just wasn't enough.
That's them now. Used for people to ride their stupid bikes on. It makes me a little angry, because it was one of my FAVOURITE places as a kid, and to see it so run down is really disappointing. I mean look at those things! How could you NOT have fun on those?!
I almost drowned in that pool. I came out of the slide 1st from the left (the one that is a complete tunnel) and I was with my uncle. He let go as we got to the bottom, I think I was about 6 at this time, and the water was over my head. That end of the pool is only 4 feet deep or so so I must not have been very big. I thought I was going to die and I was terrified of that last slide for so long. It was called the blue tornado.
Some of my best memories are in Barriere and Kamloops. In 2003 as all of you know, the entire area was wiped out by forest fires. My grandparents had to be evacuated and came to PG. My grampa was very sick with cancer at the time and it was really tough on them. When they were finally able to go back to their home there wasn't much left of their town. Their home was spared and they were able to sell it, but I'm sure there was a lot of cleaning to do. I remember talking to gramma on the phone before they were told to leave their homes and she said the ash was coming down on her house.
When you drive through there now this is a lot of what you see. It's a thing of nature, and while it destroys everything in it's path it is something that is inevitable. It's unfortunate but one day all of this will regrow and the population will start to increase.
It at least has the green undergrowth now. Everything burned so fast because of all the beetle kill, but for all the pine trees that hadn't been affected this fire was the best thing for it to regrow. Pine trees do not regenerate without fire. Fire is the only thing hot enough to open the cones for the seeds to come out and replant. So one day these hillsides will again be filled with pine trees, and I'm sure one day they'll again be taken over by beetles.
It's sad though. After they went back it wasn't long before my grandpa passed away. When he died that is when my gramma decided it was time to sell the house and move to Prince George. At least she was closer to the family which she needed at that time. Her and my grampa were married for 52 years when he passed away, I'm sure the loneliness of being a widow is very difficult for her.
Now she has a little two bedroom condo in PG. It's cluttered with all of her things and even though it's still her, it's just not the same house and it has an entirely different vibe. It feels lonely there, like she doesn't have enough company but I think that mostly has to do with the fact that she's a widow and lives there alone.
I hope that when I have kids I get to do things like this with them. It makes me sad that my parents are so far away so when Dario and I have kids they won't get to see their gramma's and grampa's on a regular basis... but then I think back to the fact that I never got to see my gramma and grampa on a regular basis and I still loved them just the same, still had just as much fun seeing them, and still created tons of great memories.
When Dario and I have kids we can take trips like this to Fort to see all the grandparents up there, take them to the lake to go swimming, go boating with them, camp out at the beach if we want to. We might have pools and waterslides here for them, but we don't have those things that Fort offers right at our fingertips here. I think it will be a lot of the same experience and they'll grow up to remember those trips the same way I remember mine.
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