Pie and Bees at Fat Jack's Diner: Pokebug Go!

My fellow bee-spotter Jasna Guy and I went on a road trip east of Vancouver to study bees and the flowers that feed them. We had a secret mission, but I'm going to be a bit circumspect about the main goal of our journey. All will be revealed in later posts.

Our first night out we stayed here at the Mighty Fraser Hotel near Boston Bar, BC.

Fat Jack's Diner and Pub is a place with a reputation for good grub on the Gold Rush Trail, the highway that runs past Hell's Gate. The owner and chef used to run an underground restaurant in Vancouver, but chose to leave the big smoke and run this business alongside the mighty Fraser River.

The chef grows food in lovely gardens in the grounds behind the motel. Before we left on our trip I looked up the Motel's Facebook page where the chef said he'd buy lunch for anyone who could pick up his cukes from Neufeld Farms on the way in. That is the best use of Facebook I have ever heard of!

The fence along the property keeps guests from tumbling down the steep drop to the railway tracks alongside the river.

A luscious plum tree laden with ripe fruit is a central feature of the yard.

A mighty hubbard squash, twice the size of a soccer ball, greets the dawn.

Purple cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli look robust and healthy. We see the chef watering the garden early in the morning, with his black hoodie pulled up like a monk enjoying the quiet solitude of this remote location.

This is one of the daily specials: a lovely caprese salad with ripe tomatoes and fresh basil.

Along with the healthy salad, we go for road trip comfort food: jalapeno bacon mac and cheese and spicy BBQ chicken wings. We also order one of the best caesar salads I have ever eaten.

I bet this firepit gets lively on weekends. There's also an art gallery here, and a bowling alley just down the road. We explored nearby Blue Lake on the vertiginous back roads, but it was lousy with sea-doo vermin.

I was impressed to see Spilanthes, which the skippers seemed to be attracted to. I wonder if it gives them a buzz?

And speaking of buzz, we found Bombus bifarius noshing on roadside chicory.

I didn't manage to get a good photo of this hairstreak butterfly, but hopefully bee spotter 2 did. (That's one of the advantages of bug-spotting in pairs!) Jasna IDed this as plant a species of draba flower.

We also saw at least three species of leafcutter bees and a cuckoo leafcutter bee. This species has orange scopae on her abdomen, but the pollen she was collecting from chicory was white.

This narrow leafcutter had white hairs on her scopae, but yellow hairs on the bands on top of her abdomen, with quite smokey wing tips.

Eat your heart out, Pokemon Go fans. This is Pokebug Go! This beetle, which I think is a California root borer (Prionus californicus), was wandering around the door to the our motel room. It's got antlers like a moose bug. I bet those larvae could do some damage. This beetle is nocturnal, so it's cool that we got to see it. (Caught and released, of course.) Just don't show it to chef, or he'll be making bug burgers with that sucka.

And yes, that is a blender smoothie cup. No, I did not make a smoothie with that bug. It just makes a handy critter catcher.

 We are also into pie spotting and this sour cherry pie with ice cream was a perfect rendition of one of my faves. The waiter warned me to watch for pits, which was music to my pie-lovin' ears. Serve it with an Amurcan-style unsweetened brewed iced tea and I am in heaven.

More Road Trip Highlights

Fruit stands--I love them and the small ones with the hand painted signs are best, but it's fun to stop at the mondo tourist trap. I love how this horse named Riley waits patiently for an apple. Of course there's all sorts of waiver signs around saying it's your own damn fault if Riley bites you.

They are very sad if you don't buy their Mennonite sausage. It looks like a small place with a few goats, but then we passed a giant barn full to the rafters of goats all waiting their turn for the fancy tourist food.

We stopped in Hope at the Owl Street Café with its passive aggressive collection of owls.

 The search for ice cream leads to strange places and expensive cones, but the Foothills brand is very good.

 

 Peter drives like a sailor, heading in the vague direction of the destination. We ended up in Vegreville, eating Ukrainian food doused in the local creamy white dill sauce. Just outside of town we were pelted with hailstones the size of baseballs. I was in the front seat, becoming quite panicky. "They're getting bigger!" (The hail, not the perogies.)

Of course we had to have a meal at our fave: the Naramata Heritage Inn. We sat on the balcony while it rained as the sun shone over the lake.

I love the Inn, steeped as it is in history, perhaps even haunted. As you can see, at least one wraith joined as at table, unless that was a raindrop on my lens.

We always have the gorgeous freshly baked bread with warm goat cheese and garlic.

 Salmon on Beluga lentils.

Of course, Ules goes for the steak.

 We listened to several books on CD. It seemed to be the sci fi trip this time around, with our fave being The Search for Wondla by Toni Diterlizzi, although Teri Hatcher's reading drove me a bit batty. We saw two coyotes, several deer (including two mule deer) two mountain goats and one badger. My favorite bit of the drive was the old highway between Canmore and Cochrane; least favorite was the congested road between Vernon and Summerland.

I'm always a bit sad when we hit the fruit stands at Keremeos because it means the fun is over. Still, it's always good to come home.