Tues June 17,2008. 7:52 AM

Sitting here on a picnic table in our Manning Provincial Park campground is a cool but lovely place to greet the world.  We've come up from Vancouver Island, at sea level to 3200 feet or so and the air is bright and crisp.  I've got to eat breakfast right now, but I'll be right back.

     OK, now I'm back with granola and homemade rhubarb sauce, nuts and seeds etc in my tummy and feeling even better.

Since leaving the confines of Corvallis, I've been able to play disc golf in a few places.  I hd two intensive days in the rain with John Ross at Milo McGiver, in Estacada, and then a day at Pier Park in Portland, all while Wendy was becoming mor erudite about folk and classical music at Reed College.  

     Then as we traveled north to the Olympic Penninsula, I hit a course just south of Port Townsend which was only 8 baskets, but growing and very pleasant and technical, albeit with rather short fairways, at HJ Carroll Pk in Chimacum.

     After arriving at sister Helen and bor-in-law Bill's place in Maple Bay, near Duncan on Vancouver Island, I played the Malahat course north of Victoria once, and found it to be rough, hilly, and neglected.  I talked to the proprietress of the establishment, who told me that she couldn't compete with the free courses and planned to sell the place and move back to Victoria from the mountain location.  I don't think there will be a Malahat course much longer.

Much more positive was my experience in Nanaimo, north of Duncan, where I played 36 holes each on two separate days.  This course at the Bowen Sport Complex on a large tract of wooded, hill, mowed land was a great combination of technical challenge and the occasional longer hole.  No hole was a simple straight shot, with trees in play to challenge the skills of all.  Some would fault it for having too many shorter holes, but of course, I'm not one of those.

I'm planning to play in a one day tournament in St Paul, MN, the Kaposia Open, on June 28th and there is a course in Vernon BC that I expect to take in tomorrow.  Overall, it is a lot of fun trying the different courses andseeing how I can do on each of them.  I haven't lost a disc yet, although there have been some searches required.

I'll give you an update on my disc adventures after the 28th.

Hotel Ymir & an Amazing Art Collection

On Sunday morning in Nelson, after raining hard all night, it continued to rain. Bob and I had looked at the distance we had to travel to get to St. Paul for his disc golf tournament the following Saturday. Unless we wanted to simply drive like heck, we decided we should leave a day early. We had planned to do a serious hike in Kootenai Glacier Provincial Park, but a check of the website revealed that it was still snowed in.

We decided to provision ourselves for the next week and headed off to the local Safeway. When we returned we met Helen and Bill driving off in the opposite direction. We discovered that Helen had left her tennis shoes in our car, so after we hooked up Snoopy we went looking for them. We thought they might have gone to mass, so went past the Catholic Church in Nelson. They weren't there. So, we headed off.

As we were driving south on BC Highway 3, we saw a sign from Ymir (pronounced Eemir) and remembered that Helen and Bill wanted to look at an old hotel there. We turned off, found the hotel and saw their rig parked across the street.

We went looking for them, but couldn't find them. Finally, they appeared out of the bottom of this hotel. Helen knew the man who owned the hotel (he used to own a nursery near Duncan, B.C.). HansWilking, 76, from near Bremen Germany is a very serious art collector. He bought the hotel because he was looking for a large house in which to display his collection. The hotel is crammed with art on every surface, all original. No smoking allowed and it is protected by all sorts of video cameras. Every room has art on all the walls, the dining room is filled with art from the Polynesian islands. It turns out that he is an expert on Hawaiian art, and has served as an expert witness in various forged art trials. His taste is really good and his pictures are loaned to major museums all over the US. He has met all sorts of famous folks, including Jaqueline Onnasis who was a real fan of Richard Priest (Hans has the largest collection of Richard Priest paintings in the world, over 250). After we looked at the collection in the hotel, we were admiring a black and white picture by a modern NY painter (he collected a lot of modern art) and Hans commented that he had three more paintings by the same artist in Salmo.

Off we went to Salmo to see the rest of his collection. He bought the Knights of Pithias Hall there and it is filled with his painting, even on the ceiling. The three large black paintings on the left wall in this painting are of from that artist. The wall is covered with Richard Priest paintings. Hans is the white-haired gentleman in the red and black coat in the foreground. In and amongst the paintings are floor lamps, chairs, and bedspreads from the hotel. However, the place is all climate controlled and protected by the same kind of security. The collection is apparently worth millions and he's also a very wealthy man, though a real curmudgeon (very few people like him). He's hard of hearing, but a real character. He likes to talk and it was difficult to get away.

If you are ever in southern BC, you should go to the Hotel Ymir (rooms with shared bath $29/night, $39/night for rooms with a private bath). Ymir itself was a mining town and is along a river with great trout fishing.

The top painting is the original of the mural in Chemainus. The bottom photo was simply of a painting I liked, sitting on the floor. An amazing place.