Ahaura River

One Sunday afternoon, our entire family walked down to the Ahaura River. We went down a road near us that went straight down the hill to the railroad track, then turned to cross a large creek.

Esther was very much not impressed with this old bridge. She calls it rickety, although many trucks cross it every day!

The creek.

After looking at the creek, we walked a long way to get to the river bed. It’s not the easiest place to push a stroller, but it worked all right with the big boys who enjoy pushing their little sister.

We had to cross the creek to get out to the Grey River.

This is the confluence of the Ahaura and Grey Rivers.

Just below where these boys are, the water rushes extremely fast through a very deep chute. They were at the top of it, keeping each other from washing away.

We passed these calves on the other side of the creek on our way home. We sure enjoyed that walk—this is a very beautiful area!

Mr. Imagination picked these lovely flowers for me.

We live less than one kilometer from a rather large river, the Ahaura, which flows into the Grey River just downstream from our town. One Sunday evening, a couple of weeks after we moved here, the children and I walked down to the riverbed after Gayle left for the week. We had fun exploring down there. Here is the track that goes down to the boat launch from the main road.

We cross this one-lane bridge nearly every day, taking Simon to work and bringing him home. It looks fine from this perspective, and is sturdy, but it sure looks rough on top. It’s an old wooden bridge, with some asphalt on top. You can see every plank, and one day when I crossed, one of the planks had popped up. It was down again when I came back through, 20 minutes later. That doesn’t really inspire confidence!

The underside of the bridge.

This goat is staked out near the bridge.

Looking upstream from the bridge.

A lot of willow shrubs grow in the higher parts of the riverbed. I was interested in how the foliage had been swept in one direction by a recent flood.

Many stock trucks and other heavy trucks cross this bridge every day!

This is the railroad bridge just downstream from the car bridge.

This was the end of our walk. We decided not to try to cross this spot! The main river is just to the left.

Notice the silt? There were large drifts of it here and there. The boys had fun slipping and sliding in it—and then they had an excuse to dip in the river before we headed home!

Both bridges, from downstream.