roadquill1

Well, after a Sunday breakfast with our Thuot family, and another entertaining afternoon and evening with the Siggers clan, we finally got away from Kamloops on Monday morning.

We had received conflicting advice on routes to travel – Hwy 16 to Tete Jaune and then west to Prince George vs Highway 1 to Cache Creek and thence north to Prince George – so we finally decided to leave it to Roada, the Road Garmin. She chose the Cache Creek option. The run to Prince George and Bee Lazee RV Park about 11km south of PG was mostly uneventful, except that in purchasing a new propane tank in 100 Mile House on a fuel stop, I ran over our sewer hose connector which was lying on the pavement. It’s toast! A search through RV Sales, and a Walmart in PG for a replacement was hopeless. We can get along without it, but since we don’t have  grey water tank, our sink drain must connect to a 5 gallon drain bucket.

We encountered spotty rain showers and chilly temps from McLeese Lake south of PG through to our late afternoon stop on Tuesday at Kitwanga (Cassiar RV) at the beginning of the Stewart-Cassiar highway 37. Temperature on Tuesday morning at Bee Lazee RV was 7C. Sandy has decided that the way to keep our butter softer is to store it in the oven. It doesn’t work. (I didn’t tell her that the oven wasn’t on.) We hit a quilt shop in Burns Lake for another pattern. I didn’t spot any tool shops.

The Cassiar RV north of the turnoff to Highway 37 at Kitwanga is a very lovely spot. Everything is very green. They have had several weeks of rain, and one couple returning from Alaska told us that they had rain the whole trip. Under threatening skies, Sandy and I walked the trail down to the Kitwanga River to see a “fish count” in operation. The young native at the trap wouldn’t let us take pictures, but he was netting up some really impressive chinooks, pulling scales, and recording sizes. He gave us a very detailed description of everything that he was doing. We were quite impressed. No bears, no rain, however, two adjacent posters on the wall at the office caused me to ponder the dangers!

The Poster 

The ambiguous notice

On Wednesday we continued north on beautiful highway 37. There are more pullouts and litter barrels than we have seen anywhere in our travels, and the wilderness is beautiful. On occasion, we encountered wagon trains of big rigs heading south, but kilometres would fly by without seeing another vehicle. (As an aside, in a recent argument about how to pronounce “kilometer”, I supported the view that it is pronounced “KILL’-o-meter” rather than the increasingly common “kil-OM-eter”. An internet search proved that my version was the preferred. “Kilometer” should NOT be pronounced to rhyme with the instruments “thermometer” or “barometer”. A “kilometer” is not an instrument, it is a distance representing 1000 meters. Hence… a kilo meter.) (Are my grammar jackboots showing?)

At Meziadin Junction we turned toward Stewart and Hyder, Alaska. We spotted one black bear retreating into the woods, and then we encountered road repair beside a beautiful lake and retreating glacier. This gave us a break and photo op. (There won’t be many more years of glacier photo-ops methinks!) A quick stop at the Stewart Information Centre got us a map of the route to Salmon Glacier on the Hyder side of the border. We continued through the border to a creek observation walkway where bears apparently could be spotted. Not so, however the salmon run was truly impressive with many large battered chinook and a few very hump-backed pinks fighting for spawning gravel. A few miles beyond that, the pavement ended and we began climbing up towards the Salmon Glacier. The road got increasingly rugged, and I switched to 4×4 drive for some of the steeper washboard stuff. After about 10 km we decided that Truck House (and us) had had enough bashing, so we u-turned and retreated. (Two weeks of rain, and no maintenance are both conducive to creating potholes and washboard on a gravel road!) One more glacier that’ll never be seen!

Salmon spawning country

The dark spots in the stream are spawning salmon.

Back at Meziadin Junction, we turned south to the Meziadin Lake Campground and got a lovely spot close to, but not on the lake. This is a well-maintained, and very full campground. This has a few full hook-up sites, so it attracts the big-rigs!

Since I have not not written much in the past week, I suddenly realized that this blog would be about 4 pages long. In consequence, I will break this monologue up into separate entries in order for readers to take bathroom breaks, or whatever. Stay tuned!

Love and best wishes!

Tony, The Quill, and Sandy, The Quilter