Currently in Prince George, BC (British Columbia), Canada which also happens to be the largest city in northern BC.
We're not going to use multiple colours, takes too much time and reformatting of daily logs. The yellow line is the USA/Canada border and where the red line ends is where we are at time of a post.
We crossed the border into Canada from the USA at Blaine which ended up being very uneventful. Were expecting to be asked/checked about the food we were taking into Canada, but ended up having quite an interesting chat with the Customs guy about where we were heading and what to watch out for. The only really official question we got was, “are you carrying any firearms”.
Followed Hwy 99 past Vancouver and kept going until Squamish, a mere 66 kms north of the capital, found an RV park located away from the town amongst the trees next to a river and settled in.
Until now we had both been very quiet photographically but whilst having breakfast outside, yes it was warm enough, we spotted these tiny little birds. Hummingbirds, have seen them on TV with them hovering in front of flowers whilst feeding and these were Rufous hummingbirds to be exact thanks to a friend in Aust. who identified them for us. When we say tiny, their bodies were about 4 cms long and a beak almost the same length but we managed to get a few keeper photos after many attempts.
We have been travelling along the ‘Sea to Sky Highway’ (Hwy 99) which is renowned for its scenery and we’re starting to get used to the road signs with words like ‘turnout’ or warning signs showing pictures of deer and more recently, moose. After a stop off in Whistler, we continued on up into the mountains where the road narrowed significantly and the gradients increased, up to 13-14% in places both upwards and down. We saw our first semi frozen lake, stopped briefly at a ‘log jam’ which is literally what it is and spent time at the magnificent green Lake Seton.
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| Lake Seton |
From Squamish we have started to slow ourselves down, travelling much shorter distances on a daily basis. After a few overnight stops along now Hwy 97, we made a detour into the historic town of Barkerville. This town is a complete historic town of 125 buildings and opens for business on the 15th May. Barkerville was created due to gold and the gold rush which was triggered in 1862.
Despite it being closed, we visited anyway and were very pleased we did. First there were virtually no other tourists wandering around looking at all the old buildings and secondly, because we are up this way early in the season, there was still a lot of snow on the ground, especially in front of and between many of the buildings as can be seen below.
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| Barkerville |
On our way into and out from Barkerville, we started to see more wildlife. There had been warning signs for deer and Moose and any talk of bears with Rob generally included, “we won’t see any bears!”. Well we did see bears, 2 of them in fact, black bears quite nonchalantly walking down the side of the road and we also had to stop to let a caribou meander across in front of us.
The 15th May seems to be ‘the’ date for openings because all the Provincial Parks, like our State Parks, are closed for the winter and open shortly on the 15th of May. We’re keen to stay in these parks further along the road.
Some 50 kms on our way back to Hwy 97, we found our first ‘boondocking’ spot down a forestry road amongst the trees next to a river. Boondocking in Aussie terms means ‘free camping’, so here we were, in the wilderness, by ourselves, oh and probably the bears. Funny thing now with Rob, she has become a ‘bear believer’ and not massively keen to wander too far away from Homer, well at least currently.
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| Homer 'boon docking' |
Not long after setting up and collecting some firewood, we were visited by a Recreation Officer and Police Officer working together for the day. After the pleasantries were over they asked, “are you hunting and do you have any firearms?”. After our “no” response, “are you going fishing”, again a polite “no”. They wanted to know where we were from considering Homer is sporting Alaskan number plates. “Australia”, which caught them a bit short. From then we compared notes on gun licensing in our respective countries and they told us about the current open hunting season on black bears amongst other animals. “What do you hunt black bears for?” we asked, “they make good hams and sausages!”was the reply!. The police officer also told us about a young male grizzly he had seen recently not all that far from where we are.
We’re still travelling in very civilised parts of northern Canada with plenty of road traffic and small towns along the way. Lets see what the next post brings.
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