The road well travelled

I recently returned from a trip to Saskatchewan. During this trip I travelled approximately 1000kms on gravel roads. Now you might ask why would I travel on gravel roads. My response would be: because I could. After all we do not have gravel roads around here and I wanted to refresh my memory to what a real gravel road is like to drive on.

The best gravel roads are in Saskatchewan. An interesting observation on this trip was many of the roads had Federal funding added into them. In some area's the gravel was mixed with red clay. No dust. Mind you it was one of the wettest year's in Saskatchewan's history. Now around here when it rains the roads go to hell in a hand basket. In Saskatchewan there was little or know difference. In one area the Government was experimenting with Canola oil as a dust control. The sweetest smelling roads to drive on.

The best way to describe the roads I was on is through pictures: So fasten your seat belts sit back and enjoy. Drooling is also permitted.

Alberta gravel roads:




The road in Alberta is not only straight, but they built is with real gravel as can be seen in the picture on the left. Those are real rocks aka gravel.


Saskatchewan gravel roads:






Again the roads in Sask. are built properly, good base and then use real gravel to cover the base. Not like the roads in this part of the Cariboo. They not only use different types of dust suppressors they even use cooking oil.




I came across these piles of gravel through out Sask. As you can see by the picture on the right they use actual gravel.

Now one of the comments I get from time to time is that you can't compare roads in Saskatchewan with roads in BC. That is partially true but then you should consider 2 things: 1. They have maybe 100 times more roads then we do in BC. 2. They build the roads properly.

WARNING - REDUCE SPEED - DANAGER

Well when you thought that you have seen everything you take a ride around the Horsefly area roads. It is never disappointing, if from bad to worst is your thing.

I have had the misfortune of travelling the past few days out the 108 Road. At the south end you had better slow down if you don't want to pound the . ..... .. out of your front end. You expected that didn't you?

But wait there is more. Try travelling long the 108 Road South off of the 2300 road. Now there is not a lot of folks living out there but it does get local and tourist traffic.


If you look closely you will see that there is no gravel on this road. It is apparent that there has been no maintenance as well

Watch it when you go around the corner. You might think that there can't be any more of this!


But guess what? It goes on like this for several more kms.

Enough said. (At this time).

I have made a FOI request for budget and work plans for the Horsefly area. It is obvious that there is no money being spent out here. When I get the request back I will be posting it to this blog.

What else? Cattle guards

I wonder if anyone from the Ministry of Highways, or the local contractor, has had a look at the cattle guard on the 108 Road and Louden Road. I guess some one is going to have to rip a tire off there vehicle before anyone does anything about it. I looks like a grader blade (surprise, surprise) has ripped a piece of the cattle guard. Come on guys, fixe it, it is not rocket science.

Then there is the case of the number 3 cattle guard on the 108 Road from the Louden Road. It was supposed to be cleaned out. They removed the cattle guard then put it back. If you are following behind a vehicle when it goes over it you can see it move. I was told by a reliable source, a contract worker, that it needs a new base. I guess this is rocket science as it has not been fixed, and oh yes, guess what, the approach is crap Enough said

Rain, Rain

Let the June rains begin, and they have. You can tell the quality of road by how it handles the rain. I was out the Bells Lake road Monday and it is rapidly turning into a 1 track goat trail. This is very dangerous as much of the track is on the wrong side of the road. Dangerous especially around curves. Is it going to be fixed? I doubt it as the only way that it can be fixed is by applying the magic ingrediant, gravel.

I washed my car on Sunday and in the short drive on Bells Lake road it looked like I had not cleaned it all year. Hmmmmmm

Mitchell Bay Road

A couple of weeks ago I made several trips out Mitchel Bay Road to visit at Antoine Lake. I have to classify this road as one of the worst roads in the Horsefly area. Stay tune while I check out the others. Having lived out that way in the past, the road has not improved, possibly, it is worst now.

I would very much like to get the work/maintenance plan for this year. However, the problem is that this public information is not being made available to the public, we the tax payer. I think the only way to get this information is to make complaints to Interior Roads, Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure in Williams Lake, the Minister, the local MLA, and perhaps even the Regional District. Does stonewalling mean anything to you? In a reply to this blog from the Ministers office I received last year, much of the information given was of the work done in the past years. If you travel any of these roads you can see that, yes, there was some work done. What is not identified is the deterioration of the roads to the point that they require rebuilding. The so called maintenance done on these roads is really throwing good money away. It still is necessary but!!!!!! (see previous blogs on this topic)

We are but a very few insignificant TAX Payers out this way and that is what we get. Even if there was some communications between the highways people and the general public, it would be a monumental improvement.

And that is how I see it.

Spokin Lake Road

I recently traveled down the Spokin Lake road towards the 108 rd. Now this in it's self is not earth shattering. What has me confused is that this road is maintained by the Horsefly roads group. Again this is not earth shattering. The confusing part is that the road was in reasonably good condition and I would hazard a guess that it was recently graded.

When I arrived at the 108 Rd, it was as if I had driven off a reasonably good road on to a goat track. The 108 Rd from the 2300 road to the Wood Jam road has not seen any sort of grading. It has, however, had some maintenance done on it in the guise of dust control or Calcium applied to it.

Now we have been blessed with a mild winter and little snow. As a result we have not had any wash outs or unusual amounts of moisture which would have caused a rapid deterioration of the road. Never the less, the roads need to be maintained before the rains come it.

If you have been a reader of this blog you will know that my #1 peeve is cattle guards. I will discuss this at a later date. My #2 peeve is "washboard" roads in particular "washboard" roads on the straight stretches. I will discuss this in a later post as well. But, this brings up the grading of the 108 Rd from Woodjam Rd to Louden Rd. It was graded. Now this is one section of road that they actually put some gravel on. What is confusing, there I go again with this confusing stuff, WHY did they not grade out the "washboard". As I have pointed out before, I am not an engineer or road technician, but does it not make common sense that when you are grading a road that you would take out the washboard?

I guess there is no sense of pride in the work you do, or.........

More on this in a later post.

Horsefly Road

If you have been reading my post, you may recall that in July of last year (2009), I wrote about the new paving job. I commented that there was not any prep work done particularly in the bad section near Jessica Lake Road. That's the section that has always been bad for as long as I can recall.

Well guess what? It's back and it is going to be bad. More of our tax dollars thrown away. You may also notice all the lateral cracking going on on the brand new section of road. If you look up on the web, lateral cracking, you will find that it is usually caused be poorly prepared road beds. You probably will recognize that these lateral cracks are showing up in the same place where they were before the resurfacing. I wonder when they will start crack sealing again!