Got even further out of town to Hedley.

Years ago, before a faster, more direct road was built to the interior of BC, my family and I used to travel this way.

This was years before Chloe was born, but I remembered the road beside the river and the charming little towns along the way. Sunday afternoon I asked Chloe if she’d like to come explore with me.

She said yes.

So we jumped in the car, stopped by the river to pick some late wildflowers, and followed the highway beside the river for 25km.

I found the little town I was after. This is Hedley.

It’s built under an old gold mine and has about fifty lovely little houses, two streets, three restaurants, four stores, one old saloon style hotel and a yard sale.

We asked the ladies of the yard sale where to walk and what to see. They sent us down the street to visit Rod.

We found Rod’s funky junk and anything store and said hello. Rod was sifting thru a gold pan with loads if little gold flecks and he was putting the gold flecks into a tiny glass bottle.

He said, “do you ladies want to see something special?” We said, “sure we do!” He opened a door and said, “step inside and close the door behind you.” He turned on some black lights and we were standing in his amazing imaginary universe. It was the most surreal moment. Gorgeous futuristic buildings and paintings straight out of Rod’s imagination made for the most amazing out of this world experience. There was no way to truly capture the moment with a photo but I tried.

We walked around, looked at everything and mentally moved into several of the charming little houses and imagined what a summer cottage in this town would feel like.

Oh, and, I bought a paint by number set from the ladies at the yard sale for $2.50. I’ve never done a paint by number because it’s a cultural thing and I didn’t grow up in North America, but boy is it a lot of fun. 😀