Larabee

Drive down Hwy 99 to I-5. First stop Birch Bay Market. It had rained overnight but it was nice and sunny all weekend.
John Walter Berry and David Moss Coulter, 2 of the original merchants in Fort Langley. they had the general store in Murrayville and in Fort Langley. Murrays corner was where 5 streets intersected, old yale road was one of them. Both were former teachers from Ontario. They were friends with Murray.
From a website gold rush trail
An Irishman, Paul Murray arrived in B.C. with his wife and family from Ontario in 1884, and settled near Fort Langley, at what became Murrayville, beside theYale Road
The Murray's had 3 boys and 4 girls. Billy Murray, the eldest son built the first hotel on the southeast corner of the preemption, in 1887. The hotel has been restored and is today a Bed & Breakfast.
Travellers Hotel (credit: Branwen C. Patenaude, Quesnel) The Traveller's Hotel, still in use today as a bed and breakfast stop, was the Murray's home at Five Corners in the middle of modern Langley. (credit: Branwen C. Patenaude, Quesnel)
Today the Encyclopedia of B.C., p.479, describes Murrayville as: "formerly known as Murray's Corners it was an agricultural and residential suburb of Langley municipality 25km southeast of New Westminster. It was named after Paul Murray, who settled there in 1874 and built a hotel on the original Yale Road. A sawmill and store were established in the 1880s. The community was the commercial centre of Langley in the early 1900s and site of the municipal hall and high school before economic power shifted to Langley Prairie."Read more
Samuel Robertson also had a tin or maybe it was pressed cast iron?? stove. On a previous visit the blacksmith explained how important this new pressed stove was as it could be shipped from britian and a lower cost and was manufactured en mass so it was an inexpensive alternative to the heavier iron stoves.......at least that is what I think he explained to us.Read more
this was up in the storage area. This may be why there were so many standard sized windows if all the window panes were 8 x 7!
They have a nice kitchen garden with lots of spuds, carrots, beets, kale and other things.
the red poppy may be palaver somniferum. the turkish poppy
the white flower is a potato flower
the purple flower is a purple potato variety called peruvian purple. we may have seen these too out on west ham island on the saturday before this trip.
the blue flower is borage. nice to have floating in a cool glass of lemonade in the summer, important to attract bees to your garden!Read more
the camp host told us about a ghost that could be seen wandering down around the blacksmith area. Colin and i took a walk, but no ghosts. It was dark going up to the catwalk structure though. trains now run by in front of the fort.....no more horse and carriage!Read more
trying to capture the moon over the big house. it was a lovely eve.