Williams Lake BC to Ferndale USA

This 325 mile drive took us 2 days…250 yesterday (Tuesday), and 75 today.  The first half of yesterdays trip, from Williams Lake to Cache Creek, was good.  From Cache Creek to the US Border was absolutely gorgeous.  At Cache Creek we pick up the Trans Canada Highway, and soon enter Thompson Canyon along the Thompson River.  It was at Spences Bridge, population of under 200, along the Thompson River within Thompson Canyon, that we saw this small herd of young Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep along the highway.  In this area, the snowfall is around 2 feet per year, with average temperatures ranging from as high as 85 to as low as 20…although the record high is 108 and record low is –20.  So living here is not “that” hard, but one MUST be prepared for the extremes. 

The drive started out much like the last … miles of scenery with lots of power lines.

    

Williams Lake, the community where we stayed Monday night, is just north of Williams Lake, a body of water which is 5 miles long, and nearly a mile wide.  The lake runs east to west, and the Cariboo Highway runs along the northern end of the lake…along with a lot of electrical wires.

    

This area is part of the Cariboo Plateau, a volcanic plateau in south-central British Columbia.  The Plateau runs south just past Cache Creek.

Sorry Arny, I almost got a picture of all of it…I guess this guy loves “Gold”.

     

The plateau area is full of lakes and streams, farm land, and painted skies.

We had a very little bit of rain, enough to wet the pavement and window, not enough to cause us any problems.

Lac La Hache, or “The Lake of the Axe”, was named during the fur trade, after the unfortunate incident of a French-Canadian voyageur who lost his axe head while chopping a hole in the ice.  A recreational and retirement community by the same name is now along the lake.

 

       

As we get closer to Cache Creek, the terrain changes.  The first half of the days drive is over…the second half is entirely different…

    

After Cache Creek the Thompson River is on the driver’s side of the road as we drive further south.  It is hard for me to take pictures unless we stop, and it is hard to stop since the pullouts are on the other side of the road.  Above I stop and get a picture to the north from where we passed, and to the south toward where we are headed.

I get a few shots, but the road has curves, and traffic, and we wonder if we missed too many good shots…but then…

…we come to the Spences Bridge community, we pass the Big Horn sheep (first picture), and we cross the Thompson River.  Now Marcia has free ride to take picture after picture with the river on her side…and she does…nearly 300 more pictures!  That’s what I get for having it set on multi-picture mode…

      

 

The Thompson River runs through a real nice canyon.  In the bottom picture, if you look close just above the river, there are  a series of tunnels, three shown in this picture alone.  To the left is a close up of one of those tunnels.

     

 

This area of the Thompson River has some very serious rapids.  It even has a “Rafting Resort”, the Kumsheen Rafting Resort, a rustic adventure sports resort with teepees and cabins is a 6-minute walk from the Fraser River.  In addition to whitewater rafting, mountain biking and rock climbing trips, the resort features an outdoor pool, a hot tub and a poolside bar…along with RV hookups.

    

At the community of Lytton the Thompson River merges with the Fraser River.  The Fraser River is a much darker river than the Thompson.   Above are two pictures after the merge.  I did not get a picture of the merge, but found this one to the left on the Internet.  Thank you Barbara for pointing it out to me…but we missed the turnoff to get the picture.    

    

As we got close to Hope, our destination for the night, we passed by “Hell’s Gate”, an  abrupt narrowing of the Fraser River.  There is a tram which takes people down to the other side of the river.  The picture on the left is the ticket office for the tram.  Just a little further down the road is a series of tunnels, one of which is named “Hell’s Gate” (if you click on the picture to the right, you can read the name along the bottom right of the picture.)   We were just thankful that the only “Hell’s Gate” that we had to pass through was just a traffic tunnel. 

30 miles more to Hope where we stayed at the Wild Rose Campground, $31 Canadian for full hookups with good cable.  I got rid of the rest of my Canadian money, and left her an extra $2 which I asked her to use to help some child who was short buying an ice cream.  She smiled and said, “I do that all the time..."

      

 

     

Fifty miles down the road and we cross back into the states at the Sumas Port of Entry.  I wish it was as easy for me to get into Canada as it is to the United States.  Another 20 miles and we are at the The Cedars RV Resort for two nights.  It is nice to be back in the lower 48…and we will always remember this wonderful trek to a place called Alaska, along with the trip up and back through a very wonderful area of Canada.

2.5 KM Away from Alaska Highway – Dawson Creek Walmart

 
Two days of travel has taken us from Banff to the Walmart just shy of Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway…560 miles of driving.  Hinton, AB, was pretty much in the middle of the drive, so that is why we stayed there last night…and I was so tired from driving through the rain, the snow, the mountains…don’t think I could have driven much further.  Above is one of the highlights of the drive in Banff headed for Jasper, Bridal Veil Falls.  To the right is a picture of the upper area of the falls…hidden in the clouds, which is the story of the day, along with the snow.

A mile before Bridal Veil was this series of waterfalls…waterfalls that seem to have no name because they only appear for a short time.

It wasn’t much further away that we hit the snow in force.  Lucky for us, nothing was sticking on the ground…but it still makes for tougher driving conditions, and higher tension on Marcia’s nerves. 

Here you can see what we were dealing with all day long…

Here is our last bear sighting, just as we entering the Jasper (town) area.  And if you thought that sighting was bad…

Here are four of the six Bighorn Sheep we saw as we entered the Columbia Icefield Discovery Centre as we entered Jasper National Park.  Amazingly, people were still taking the Icefield Tour…bet those pictures all turned out well.     

It was such a hard days driving, Skruffy volunteered to take over.






Asked Marcia what she thought of it, and she said, “Couldn’t be any worse than what you have been doing.”  Even Skruffy got a kick out of that one.






Asked Bubba, and he said he could sleep through anything.  Well, I decided to keep driving myself...but thanks for asking Skruffy.

Today was a totally different day…the storm clouds still lingered up in the high mountains of upper Jasper National Park, but we had blue skies.  Went into Hinton to get gas, and sure enough, little to no snow on the ground in Hinton.  Back tracked, which is when we got this picture, to Highway 40, and headed for Dawson Creek.

They advertise this route as the “Scenic Way to Alaska”, which is a bit of hype considering most people just drove from Banff to Jasper…but it did have its scenic areas.

A better advertisement might be, “The road which will prepare you for all the rough patches along the Alaska Highway.”  It sure had its moments today…had to give it a break in Grande Prairie, AB because it was giving Marcia such a headache with all the jolts.  At one point they were working on this bridge, and had created a temporary dirt road which lead down 4 feet and back up 4 feet right next to where the bridge was be built.  With all this rain and snow the past few days, it gives on a moment of “should I”, followed by, “what are my choices”.   We made it through just fine, hope the four RVs going the other way (we just beat them, and it is only one vehicle at a time) made it ok.

Rivers seemed to be the theme of today.  Lots of trees, lots of hills, and lots of river sightings.

   

For about 50 miles before Grande Prairie, and for a good 30 miles, there were lots and lots of Pine Trees, and areas where they had harvested them.  We also saw many what seemed to us as Natural Gas, but possibly oil, holding tanks, and lots of trucks which seemed to be hauling it out of the area.  Saw a few logging trucks, and just before the city saw a huge lumber yard.  With all these heavy trucks along the highway, the roadway was definitely messed up from all of this…and little signs that they (Government) was doing much about repairing it. 

    

Personally I found much of the drive between Hinton and Grande Prairie to be a familiar one…lots of hills similar to the hills along the Sierra Nevada.  Yet these hills have lots of trees, which was refreshing.  However, I love driving Highway 49 in California along the foothills…so rich in California mining history, and well, that area was not far from my native home.

As we headed west from Grande Prairie to Dawson Creek, you quickly see how Grande prairie got its name.

It was refreshing to see a bit of farming of things besides trees.  No problem on my end with trees as a crop, but there is something about man working the ground, planting, harvesting all within the same year…or in some cases, many crops per year.  We had not seen much of this since we left Idaho.

So we are in Dawson Creek.  Tomorrow we will get a RV park for a day or two, and then we will start out on the Alaska Highway.