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Published: August 2nd 2011
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July 25, 2011 Boya Lake, BC 12916 was the starting mileage. 59 degrees and overcast—rained last night. Left out of our adjacent campsites at 9:30 am with Jim, Diane and Rocky in the lead.
This part of the Cassiar Highway is extremely lovely with soaring mountains, deep gorges with water rushing through, rivers/creeks/ponds/lakes too numerous to count, forests with many different kinds of tall trees making a green “quilt”-like patterns on the mountains below the tree line, great numbers and varieties of wildflowers—yellow, orange, fuchsia, and white--in bloom on the roadside and in the forest undergrowth. Snow still on the mountainsides in patches that contrast with the greens of the trees, scrubs, and grasses. Just so gorgeous everywhere you look; you can’t help but be in awe of the beauty of this land!
We drove up the Alaskan Highway from Dawson Creek, as historically that was the start of the Al-Can Highway; however, if we drove to Alaska again, the Cassiar is the highway I would chose to come up on. It is much more scenic without the miles and miles of ugly trees and miles and miles of some really bad frost heaves in the road. I am glad
we drove the long way (the Al-Can), as we did see some interesting sights and wildlife that you do not see here; such as, the wood bison and thin-horned sheep.
Had driven just a short way on the Cassiar and looked down into a meadow and saw a moose standing in it. Of course, by the time we stopped and got out all the cameras he/she was into the woods. Further along, we saw some small spruce grouse along the roadside. They flew up at Rosie’s approach, so no pictures there either.
We all stopped to look around at Jade City shops. 90% of the world’s jade is mined in this region of BC. The huge blocks of Jade are shipped, mainly to China, to be carved. The shop we went into is then selling the carved jade items that have been shipped back from China. If any of the jade you purchase has small black specks in it, the jade came originally from these mines. They also mine other minerals in this region---asbestos a number of years ago, for one. Copper is mined near here for another.
Following rivers through mountain passes, some of the mountains
are clearly volcanic in origin. We stopped at Dease Lake to get gas as there are very few places to get gas on this road. Gas was expensive at $1.489 per liter and so we just got $50 worth. Enough to get us to the next place without worry. Mileage is at 13013.
After driving and stopping to look and exclaim, and then driving on and stopping to look and exclaim again, we arrived at Kinaskan Provincial Park. Parked in side by side camping spots with our noses a few feet from the lakeshore. The four of us got out and walked just down to the shore to see the lake. There to greet us was a loon and then shortly there were 4 loons swimming along the shore. We had spent lots of time looking for them and here they were right in front of our noses!!!
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