May 13 in British Columbia on Highway 97

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Friday the 13th Prince George Wal-mart parking lot. Starting mileage 7118 50 degrees. Partly cloudy.

Got a late start as up and down last night with coughing, so tried to sleep in. Gassed up Rosie II the first thing. Must be a price fix as all stations in the area have exactly the same price for gas, $1.349 a liter in Canadian dollars, of course. Which means that a gallon would cost a little over $5.40!

Started up and kept climbing all day it seems. Lots of ponds, overflowing rivers, wet land, snow in many spots. Saw two female moose in really shaggy winter coats. One small bear walking along eating grass on the side of the road. At a rest stop, along the swollen Fraser River, we saw a Wilson warbler, a very bright yellow bird with a black cap.

Continued to climb and the area got snowier and the lakes and ponds were not completely thawed. Near the still icy Lake McLeod, we saw another bald eagle sitting in the top of a tree. The road began to go along a rock cliff and water just poured down the face with small waterfalls all long. We then came to a true waterfall called Bijoux Falls. We had lunch in Rosie II, since the picnic tables were sitting in deep snow, and watched a small flock of stellar blue jays flying and hopping from branch to branch. This blue/black bird is the provincial bird of British Columbia.

We continued to climb right up to the snow covered mountains we had seen in the distance. This long ridge was covered in snow half way down the peaks. We counted 20 peaks like rick rack in front of us. Again a river, the Pine River this time, cut a pass around and through the mountains. Very narrow, two lane road that you expected to be a secondary road from its looks and not the main route of all traffic north. In one of the ponds spotted 2 swans. The road was too narrow to get off and really look at them, but did get a picture. Hope to ID the kind of swan from that.

Continued on up the mountains to the town of Chetwynd which we knew from our tour books had chainsaw art throughout town. We pulled into the information center and asked about a free place to park and she directed us to a lot across the street. Settled down for naps at about 2:30. Still feeling crappy and hope rest will help “cure” us. Woke up with another Roadtrek pulled in near us. Had dinner and worked on this blog. Valerie was able to get a WIFI signal so checked mail and sent out another blog entry.

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