The Water Taxi

We have a highway widening project going on in our area. It is the only highway that goes from one end of our valley to the other. Well after 9 months of work being done, they had a setback. A HUGE crack appeared on the side of the mountain--where it wasn't supposed to be! The blasting created this fissure(crack). There must have been a fault at that spot.It made the highway below it unsafe for travel, as it was slowly sliding down towards the road. SO this meant that we were now cut off from the central and northern end of the valley. Which is where the largest city happens to be. So that meant that hundreds of people were no longer able to get to their jobs on the other side of this now closed road. People came up with different solutions. Some took the backroads through the bush. This was rather dangerous as these roads are sometimes very narrow with steep drops over the edge! YIKES! So that wasn't safe. The government decided after a week or so to upgrade a former logging road for use. They did this and it helped very much but a former 45 minute drive now became 1 1/2-2 hours. Then they decided to put a water taxi into service around the blocked road. This became a very popular form of transportation. Well...I decided that I'd like to try out the water taxi service. So one saturday afternoon my daughter and I drove up to the terminal and got on this FREE water taxi. I figured we could go have coffee with friends on the other end and then turn around and come home.
We had a great time on the boat! It was a neat experience. The boat was a summertime tourist boat....all set up for summer parties. It was a very pretty boat on the inside.
We should have left earlier in the day so that it wouldn't be so dark by the time we got to the other end of the run....oh well....it was a fun experience.
Once we got to the other end our friends talked us into staying overnight. It was great! We left in the morning so we could get back in time for church but ended up missing most of it....oh well...all in all it was a great experience and a fun weekend!

The walkway to the boat.















It was a chilly foggy day on the water.







Our windblown selves on the boat.


This picture shows the crack...sort of...too bad it was so dark by this time. Anyway...along the right side of that orange fence is where the crack goes...right down to the road--it goes across the top and then back down the other side to the road again...nice clean break..but WAY too much material to come down at once as it would land in the lake and cause a mini tsunami!
If you look you can see the smoke coming up from the drills...you'll also see the lights. They're drilling and blasting across the top of the crack. They blasted a bunch of rock etc. -pushed it over the edge and up against the bottom of the crack. This was to hold it up enough so that it would stop sliding! C-r-a-z-y!! Not my idea of safe! But I guess it's temporary and they say that if it does decide to let go and slide that there will be enough warning for everyone to get out of the way. I sure hope they're right!

If you look-you can see a mountain goat that fell down into the crack. They were able to sedate him and lift him out...apparently he was okay.
**I got this picture off Google**