May 19--British Columbia--around Muncho Lake

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May 19th, Thursday at Overwaitea Grocery Store Parking lot Really foggy this morning at 44 degrees. 7,704 is our starting mileage and left at 9:30.

Filled up with gas first thing at $1.429 a liter and we took 78.589 liters. Drove by a ranch where they raise bison. For the next 200 miles we will be driving through the Canadian Rockies on the drier side, we believe. We climbed up 3,500 feet to the summit near Steamboat Mountain and looked over the Muskwa River Valley. If you go up, you then go down crossing many rivers, streams, and creeks. Passed a number of places that have either not opened yet or have closed for good. They are marked on the map so you think it is a community, but really is a couple of sad looking structures on the side of the road that look to have been deserted for many years. Sort of like what you often see in the desert before the freeways.

Signs and our guide book had warned us to look out for sheep on the road and we were hoping to see some. Just south of Muncho Lake we spotted 7 of a thin horned variety of sheep called stone sheep. They were right on the side and middle of our lane so couldn’t miss them. We then saw 3 something we can’t decide if they were elk, or our best guess, is caribou that have not grown their antlers for this year. Pulled off for lunch at a great place to see the snow covered Rockies.

Drove on to Provincial Park campground at Muncho Lake---thankfully there are two camping areas there as 15 of our group had filled the lower campground. Muncho lake had a frozen crust over 99% of it and was a bright turquoise blue like glass. The surface sparkled like someone had sprinkled it with glitter or sugar crystals. About all the animals we saw were sea gulls circling and landing on the ice. They didn’t let us look at the color of their legs to see if they were Mull gulls or not.

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