The Christmas Party - Good Food, Good Times, Good Friends

Thirty-one members and spouses gathered at the Barley Mill Pub on Saturday for our annual Christmas party and silent auction. An enjoyable time and great food. When I left, a patrol car saw me drive out of the parking lot, and pulled me over - I think he was a little disappointed that I don't drink alcohol.

Capilano Rock and Gem

Club Show and Sale at Cherry Lane

Busy day at Cherry Lane - demos, great product, and interested people. Thank-you to all of the club members who participated and helped raise the profile of the club.

Rest in Peace, John Fair

Our condolences go out to John's family. John lost his life on November 10th in a two vehicle crash east of Rock Creek. Boundary Creek Times reports that slippery road conditions were likely a contributing factor in the crash.

John was most generous at Rendezvous allowing access to his gold claim for field trips.

Rock Hobby Materials for Sale

Christmas Party - new venue - we don't have to cook!

New venue and format for the Christmas Party.

Our annual Christmas Party will be held in a private room at  the Barley Mill Pub in Penticton.

Same date – Saturday December 7^th

5:30-6:30 social time

Dinner at 6:30

A table will be set up for our traditional silent auction, and a box provided for food bank donations.

The club will pay for your meal, and you are responsible for your own alcohol purchases.

We need to know numbers and food choices by November 24^th. Please e-mail the club address with your intentions, you can also call Duane if you have questions.

Katherine and Duane’s computer is down at the moment – waiting for a part.

There are three menu choices:

A traditional Turkey Dinner, Baby Back Ribs, or a vegetarian option.

Kindly respond with the number of people and the menu choice for each.

We look forward to a great party, without having to cook!

Christmas Party December 7th at the Barley Mill

Details to follow - private room with table for silent auction.

New Venture for Courtnay and Luke - Morticia Bloom

Courtnay and Luke have stepped back from the club as they are extremely busy with work, and their new store.

"We are under Morticia Bloom on Facebook if anyone would like to message us and the address of the shop is 428 Main Street, we have a purple door and are open Tuesday to Saturday 10 to 5! Thanks"

Courtnay welcomes any of us to stop by the downtown Penticton shop, and we are hoping that they will be able to join us for the Christmas Party.

 https://www.facebook.com/MorticiaBloom/

Vintage Clothing, Vintage Artisan Decor, Sterling Silver Jewelry, Plants, Crystals and local maker items

Rendezvous 2020

Laidlaw has snow - same meeting place - different trip

Hello all,

First of all, a huge thank you to our Hero, Dennis, who checked out Mount Laidlaw for our field trip and discovered that the route up the mountain is already snowed in and that destination will not work for Saturday.

Meanwhile, Dennis, on this last trip as our Wagon Master, is willing to take us to the Similkameen River – the red bridge site or one of the other sites on the other side of Keremeos, which have been  good rock hounding sites in other years.  We will still meet at 10 AM at Twin Lakes Convenience Store and head through via Ollala to Keremeos and beyond.  Bring your lunch and warm clothes, including scarves, gloves and hats, because the wind can be cold down by the river.  Also a bucket or sack to collect rocks in.  We have found serpentine, jasper, petrified wood and petrified bog, etc. in past years. The weather seems to be breaking for us and it will be good to see everyone who can make this trip.

Hope to see you there!

Katherine

If you are coming from Osoyoos, call Dennis and Donna for a meeting spot in Keremeos.

Field Trip

Hello all,

Our Wagon Master has requested that everyone planning to attend the field trip on Saturday, Oct 26^th, meeting at 10 AM at the Twin Lakes convenience store, please phone Donna Carpenter at 250-493-8431 to confirm prior to October 24^th. This may be our last trip this year, weather permitting and we need the numbers to ensure we have hot dogs, buns, etc. for the picnic lunch.

Looking forward to seeing you there.

Katherine

Club Show and Sale November 30th - Cherry Lane

Hello all,

FYI, we have booked Saturday, November 30^th for the Club tables at Cherry Lane mall, in our usual spot.  So far we have the following people wanting sales space that day:

Jerome  & Sandra Albo, John DeLong, Jane Moore, Mike Ryan, Duane Hamm from our last meeting, plus Donna Carpenter.  Ken Laidlaw and I will be providing items for the Touch and Feel Table, as will many others, I am sure. 

The mall opens at 9:30, but we can arrive earlier to set up our stations and we have been asked to stay until 5:30 when the mall closes.  If you would like to participate and are not on the list, please let us know by responding to this email.  Even if you aren’t selling anything, you can man the Touch and Feel table and talk to people about rocks, collecting and lapidary work.  If the date isn’t going to work for you, please let us know. 

For the Touch and Feel table, we are always looking for the unusual, so bring in some terrific samples to show off and we will hand out our postcards as usual to promote the Club.

I will contact the members who are not on our email list to ensure we get this date on everyone’s calendar as it is great to have members drop in, even if they are not actively selling.

Also, for your info, Donna and I met with Bethany at Leir House and they have instituted several changes, including handing out the meeting room key before the meeting and collecting it afterwards.  Donna is handling all the insurance certification for us and I will collect the key in the afternoon before our meeting on November 6^th since I am usually in town on other errands on the meeting date.  Apparently our pot luck dinner in December qualifies as an “event” and requires different authorization so that is still up in the air, but the date will remain the same.  We should be able to confirm the location at the November meeting.

Hope everyone is enjoying the weather.

Katherine

PS  Duane survived his second knee joint replacement surgery this week and is recuperating at home which makes our cat and me very happy!

Congratulations Katherine!

1st, and 2nd in her class, and Best in Show!

Rendevous Summary sent to BCLS

Prepared by event Chair - Jerome.

Rendezvous 2019.

An interesting and different experience from past events.  How you say? 

1. We ran a campsite as a club to accommodate campers as camping in the area was limited and

facilities were heavily booked in 2018 as it was a long weekend event.

2. We contracted a mine site to give participants the opportunity to visit one of the premiere

mineral sites in the area at a reduced rate.

3. We catered the meal which cost  less than half the cost of the previous catered meals  for the AGM

Overall, we went out on a limb to make this an interesting and affordable event for BCLS members.

We could never have pulled this off without the committed (not mentally) committee who coordinated and put together the event.  Dennis Dean spent an enormous amount of time visiting in the Boundary area and arranging scouting trips to pick out sites that would be interesting and worthwhile.  He and Donna Carpenter set up and ran a worthwhile campsite, which was more than reasonably priced for the camper.  Mike Ryan coordinated the demos and display cases as well as helping with the meal ably assisted by wife Stephanie.  Duane Hamm oversaw the set up of the facility and he and Katherine MacNeill checked out and saw that Rock Candy tours were successful.  Katherine filled in in many areas where help and support was needed. Sandra Albo. helped coordinate the potluck Friday and assisted in the hospitality area on the weekend.  Sam (Sandra Smith) was awesome as she coordinated registration, advertising, and was saddled with the horrendous burden of filling the rock candy trip on Sunday, as so many people who booked a spot did not bother to show up or notify us and left us facing a possible $700 deficit. She also undertook the meal coordination on Sunday and made it work even though we had 30 committed meal orders not show up.  As for me, I found myself dealing with a few minor happenings thanks to the capable and committed efforts of the organizing committee.

Other than the organizing committee, we had a number of club members and friends who committed to the event and were there to help with whatever needed to be done.  Sharon Ewin, , Fred Wiley,  John Fair, Jason Albo, Gary and Cornelia Stromgen,  Sandy and Mike Fairburn, .,  Rob Webster, Bill and Judy Rogers, Fran and Alan Brooks,   --thanks for all your efforts.

In holding any event, the facility and the people you deal with, make or break the event.  We had a great facility at a most reasonable price. The Rock Creek Fair staff made every effort to make the event go smoothly.  The support from the people of the Boundary country in assisting with sites to explore, and in making us welcome was most appreciated. 

What we recommend for future events.

1.      All club commitment s for meals, trips, etc. need to be paid in advance.  We had over 30 people who had reserved for the Rock Candy trip who did not show up and thus left us scrambling to fill spots and also depriving fellow rock hounders of the opportunity to go on the Rock Candy trip.  There were also almost 30 people who asked for the meal and then did not pay or show up.  Our contracts left us in the position of having to pay for these commitments even though we did not have the people who committed show up.  This could have left the whole event as a monetary loss.

2.      We taxed our man power to the limit and unless a club has a much larger base than Penticton, I would suggest that catering the meal and running the campsite might be stretching it a bit.

3.      Set up of display cases, the bucket raffle, the auction, and collection of monies are all areas to be carefully considered.  Harley and Livia Waterson, were a great help in setting up the display cases as they were a puzzle close to a Rubik cube. Whats available and how to use what is in the trailer, well ahead of time,  would greatly assist in organization.   Ken Dewerson ably handled the bucket raffle with excellent support from club members.  The auction was Harley’s magic and Ron  Neilson, filled in at the last minute as auctioneer and made this an exciting event.  Because we had added Rock Candy, camping, and meals ,to the collection of monies, we supplied much of the coordination of the registration,  To promote continuity, I would suggest future events have this coordinated by the BCLS.

4.      It was also recommended that in light of the recent changes we made at the request of the BCLS, the guidelines for Rendezvous be updated to reflect the directions the BCLS wants to take.

Re-worked Equipment

Check Black Mountain Artisans on Facebook and see the newly refurbished pieces.

September Meeting Cancelled

The Rendezvous team needs a rest - you will have an e-mail from Katherine. No meeting in September - next meeting October.

That's a wrap.........

A great weekend in Rock Creek, with 158 people registered for Rendezvous. One very tired group of club volunteers! Lots of compliments on the event, and photos to follow on this site and the event site.

From Castanet - Hoodoo Adventures are collecting ticks............

If you or your pet has been bitten by a tick, bring it to Hoodoo Adventures.

The Penticton outdoor adventure guide has agreed to help a research group learn more about these unwanted blood suckers that can carry debilitating diseases like Lyme disease.

“We have collected over 50 ticks so far,” said Hoodoo co-owner Lyndie Hill, explaining they have been collecting ticks from the public since mid-April- at the start of tick season.

“We do a tick check everyday with our after school kids. Because we are doing adventures in the mountains and areas like Carmi Hill we are finding them on kids, on their heads and legs.”

The staff are well trained on how to properly remove them.

She said the ticks are common in places like Campbell Mountain, Skaha Bluffs and up Carmi Hill. They start to show up when the weather warms up and can be found in the long grass or on branches.

“We have a safe container here at Hoodoo HQ on Ellis Street,” she said. “We will safely store ticks to be collected and analyzed for disease and other valuable information.”

The research group has come to pick up the ticks three times already, she said. They are studying and testing them for disease. Hoodoo Adventures will continue to collect ticks for however long tick season goes to this year, she added.

This appears to be a particularly bad season for ticks, which are spreading and growing in numbers in B.C., according to B.C. Public Health.

There are two different kinds of ticks in the Okanagan – the wood and deer tick. The wood tick is the size of a pea and is not known to be a carrier of Lyme disease, says Interior Health.

The deer tick is the size of a sesame seed and has been linked to a handful of cases of Lyme disease locally, added Interior Health.

Dogs are more likely to bring home ticks than humans, often in their ears and on their heads.

“It is important to remove ticks found on people and pets. To do so, wear gloves and use needle nose tweezers to gently grasp the tick close to the skin. Pull the tick straight out without squeezing it. After it is removed, clean the area with soap and water,” said an Interior Health information sheet put out last April.

Although most tick bites are harmless, it is important to watch for signs of illness and see a doctor as soon as possible if you notice a bull’s eye rash or other symptoms like achy muscles, fever and fatigue.

IF YOU FIND A TICK – bring it to Hoodoo Adventures:

• Put it into a zip-lock bag or old pill bottle with a blade of grass or tiny piece of damp paper towel.
• Write down the 5 following pieces of information:
• The date you found the tick
• Where you found it, e.g. crawling up pants, embedded in scalp, etc,
• Where you think you picked it up, e.g. hiking up Carmi, climbing at Skaha
• The animal it was removed from, e.g. dog, horse, human; and
• Name and phone number of person depositing the tick.

Sunday Barbeque

For those club members who were unable to come, the rest of us didn't mind buying the left over steaks - they were awesome!