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.

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…