You Don't Want To Be A Groom In Bridesville

  We had finished Anarchist Mountain east of Osoyoos and Roy's GPS device told him that he had burned 5,000 calories climbing that edifice.  I can only imagine how many I burned what with all the crashing, bruising and cursing I did on my painful slog to the summit.  Which as Roy kept reminding me was not where I thought it was.

While we were intent on making Rock Creek where we planned to camp for the night, we felt we had earned a break and since for the most part, it was downhill from the summit of Anarchist to Rock Creek, we thought we could spare the time to explore the first town we happened upon - Bridesville.

Sweeping vistas

The last thing I would want to do is insult the citizens of this burg but as much as we looked, there did not seem to be one redeeming feature of the place.  Having once been on a very important railway, this was probably once a bustling town.  You know what I mean - wild salloons, gunfights on dusty streets, romantic intrigues.  Probably had 6 hotels, 2 livery stables, 3 competing hardware stores, a blacksmith shop and a brothel (one floor of the Hotel British California).  Like many of the abandoned towns in B.C., there is not nothing to see there today.  For example, this year we stopped at Eholt and had a small picnic at a wide spot in the trail.  The only indication that a town had once existed there was a commemorative plaque.  We couldn't even find the foundations described on the historic tablet.

Postcard Views

Roy and I ventured into a swaybacked house to inspect the garage sale advertised out on the street.  The husband and wife who lived there would have looked perfectly normal standing out front of their dwelling each of them clutching a pitchfork.  There was nothing for sale that interested us unless we had a use for rusty scrub pads, a bedpan with chipped enamel, a worn flourescent green office chair and such.  In one of the bedrooms, I did find something of interest although it was not something I could take with me - a curious method of attaching a shelf to a wall.  Some ingenious schlub  had bent two tin cans, one looked like a juice can and the other a no name brand of something gross like canned mushrooms, nailed them to the wall and then balanced a board on top.  Like I say, ingenious.

Ingenious

 I had forgotten about the experience and it was only the other day when I was quaffing some spring water and, as is my habit to read while I eat and drink, I nearly sprayed with bottled water the innocent patron sitting next to me at the lunch counter when I discovered the fine print on the label proudly declared that this particular water came from you guessed it.  Bridesville.

Even the post office had given up on this place