May 11 and 12--British Columbia--Highway 97

---

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 Save-on-Foods parking lot West Kelowna 57 degrees, 6664 mileage, very cloudy.

Drove through very high mountain ranges as we moved west on 97C away from the river valley. Snow on the ground on all sides of the road and the road itself is rough and bumpy, but dry. Grades going up and down were some of the steepest we experienced. Forests of planted pine of some sort cover all the mountains as far as you can see, but the trees don’t look healthy. Some sort of blight from insects or disease or something has turned many of the trees brown or some of the limbs brown. Many dead. Reminded me of the how the trees looked in Eastern Canada after the acid rain from the forest fires in Yellowstone. Still harvesting some areas with clear cutting.

Road turned due west again before even getting into Kamloops so avoided town altogether---didn’t even see the outskirts just the crossroads. We were a bit concerned, as we needed gas, but kept going and spotted a small store with gas pumps in front of a trailer park, on the other side of the road. Out came an older Indian woman in her sari and then a young Indian woman pumped the gas. Cheapest gas we had seen in a while. Place was called Cherry Creek---saw no cherry trees and didn’t think it was big enough to have a name. 6788 mileage.

Drove on, on two lane road now into Cache Creek. Had lunch at a gas station parking lot on the side of the creek and decided that we would go back to an RV park we saw as we came into town, and spend the night if it wasn’t too expensive. Town was 3 motels and a couple of gas stations. Have no idea where people bought groceries.
No photos taken as road and drive was challenging.

May 12, 2011 9:30 6830 mileage to start. 50 degrees out with bright sun and no clouds.

Paid $30.24 for the night at the office which was now open. Heading due north toward William’s Lake. As we were slowing down for road construction noticed a huge nest in the tree with what we thought was a bald eagle in it. Fortunately, there was a pull-out on the left side of the road and we were able to get out and take pictures and view her through our binoculars.

All traffic was stopped for road construction for awhile. Large number of empty double flat bed trucks stopped with us. Not sure what they haul. Following another river valley that was the route of the gold rush stage line. Road construction off and on all day on this stretch of road. Guess they have a limited amount of time to do work before it snows again. Drove through wide valleys with some cattle, but mostly trees of various kinds. Onetree is really rather ugly in shape, a kind of evergreen that is tall with very skinny limbs that have a rough look to them. Seeing more birch trees, especially in higher elevations. Some trees just starting to leaf out.

William’s Lake is a pretty area with the town situated around the large lake. This is a real resort area with water skiing and other water sports in the summer. We stopped in at the extremely nice welcome center built of large red cedar trees. After getting some maps and material from the center we then took a nap in their parking lot. We watched a man and woman give out something to a line of people who drove up. Finally, inquiring minds had to know what they were doing. Twice a year this couple go up to a Hutterite Community and get free range “happy” chickens and then distribute them to people who order from them. While we watched, they unloaded the back of a pick-up and a trailer, handing out sacks of frozen chickens that each weighed between 4-7 lbs. We thought they were geese they were so big.

In the town of Quesnel,—the “s” is not pronounced by the radio announcer---we saw the largest stack of logs we have ever seen. The photo shows one of the smaller stacks. There were several HUGE mills in town, some pulp and some lumber. The flat bed trucks we had seen were loading up stacks of plastic wrapped lumber and heading south to some place. We turned the corner in town and came across another sight of stacks of timbers. They were maybe 100 timbers deep by miles long. Huge equipment were seen moving handfuls of them.

Spotted a small black bear about 50 miles south of Prince George. Valerie had said, “there’s a bear” a little ways before seeing this one but, then talked herself into believing it was a stump since it didn’t move. With both of us seeing this guy walking along by the road, she now thinks the other rump she saw was another bear.

The night before we had had a light rain in Cache Creek but, this area had a torrential rain with hail and with the snow melt, all the streams were flooding and evacuations were taking place. Every stream we crossed that day, and there were a lot of them, had fast moving water over the banks or very close to the top.

Entered Prince George which is the largest town we had seen since entering Canada. It had one of everything—Home Depot, Wal-mart where we spent the night, Starbucks etc. etc. Settled for the night in the parking lot with several other RoadTreks who are heading up to Alaska with us.

---