Prince George to Williams Lake, British Columbia

    

We broke camp at 9:30, headed over to the gas station where regular is almost under $1 per liter now (it is up to $1.29 per liter in parts of the Yukon and upper BC), and left the Yellowhead Highway turning south on Highway 97, the Cariboo Highway.  I find it interesting how up in Canada and even in Alaska all the highways have names.  Down in the states, it is “I-5”, or “I-80”, or US-50.  Of course in Florida US-19 has its own bumper sticker…”Pray for me, I drive US-19”.  Anyway, today’s travels and some of tomorrow’s will be on the Cariboo Highway.  And no, we did not see any Caribou…they are all far up north where it is cooler.  Their trek southward will take place real soon.  However, Highway 97 is also known as the Okanagan Highway, John Hart Highway and Alaska Highway.  Now we are all equally confused. 

As we turned onto the Cariboo Highway, we quickly drove over the Fraser River (pictures above), and followed it all day – though at times from a bit of a distance.  The Fraser River is the longest river in British Columbia, starting in or near Jasper National Park, and ends at the Strait of Georgia near the city of Vancouver where it splits into four forks before each fork enters the Strait.

I nearly titled this blog, “The Dragon is Snared”.  Sure glad I cleaned the windows when I got gas as we left this morning.  We thought it was dead, and at first the windshield wipers could not loosen it from the snare…but after 10 minutes it seemed to wake up (probably got knocked out when it hit the window at 35 mph), squirmed a little bit, and when I started up the wipers, it flew upwards…now I cannot say if it survived the hood of the motorhome or not…we hope it did.

Saw a lot more of the green fields today…and a view of today’s nemesis…electrical wires.  Marcia fought with not taking pictures all day because of electrical wires.  The further we go south, the more electrical wires there are, spoiling the view. But we understand and accept that they are needed…but we don’t want to publish ugly pictures.  (He says that after publishing a picture of a snared Dragonfly)

Eighty miles into today travels and we cross over the Quesnel River in the town of Quesnel.  We are half way to our destination…

What was that about not showing any bad pictures today???  Well, she was just getting even for me sneaking a few shots of her over the past two weeks.  Oh, you missed them you say?  Well, they are there…

After Quesnel the views got a bit better, and the wires did disappear at times.  Seems like you can see for miles and miles here…

This is the view around the same time from my side of the window.

Another brush with the Fraser River…and the threatening clouds.  We did have a little rain, but not much…but it sure threatened rain a lot today.

   

At least we are getting back to where there are hills again.

I pulled into a turnout and got this shot of “where we came from”.

     

And the clouds really make the pictures today.

And the only wildlife we saw was not wild…but these horses sure looked good out there.  We have seen a lot of horses over the past few days…that has been nice.

    

As we get close to our destination, Marcia gets a few pictures of McLeese Lake.  Just one of many lakes we saw today…this one had views with few electrical wires which you can see along the bottom of both shots.

Today’s destination was a mere 150 miles away from Prince George, to Williams Lake British Columbia.  I had read that the Williams Lake Stampede Campground had a nice laundry room, $31 full service sites for 30 amp, and unless there was something going on at the horse arena, it should not be too crowded.

    

When you pull in, just stay to the right and follow the signs.  It is a self-serve location, and you register here at the utilities building…clean bathrooms with clean showers and a very clean laundry facility (but with only two washers and two dryers…$2 to wash, $3 to dry but you can combine both washers into one dryer most of the time.

    

To the left is the arena.  Each year at the end of June and early July, they hold a huge stampede here.  They also have many weekend events which go on through the spring, summer and fall too.  In the picture upper right, you can see that the 50 amp area is the most popular.  They go for $33 or $34 per night, and are all pull throughs.  We parked right in front of the utility building so that I could have easy access to the laundry room.  By 5:00 the laundry was done, by 6:00 we were eating the crock-pot beef stew that Marcia had cooking all night long.  Yummy.  

Tomorrow we drive another 250 miles, and that will put us 50 miles from the US border, and 80 miles from our first lower 48 camping spot since we entered Canada way back on May 15th.  That will have put us in Canada and Alaska for nearly 13 full weeks.  WOW, seems like just yesterday…