When I was growing up in Innisfail, North Queensland – there was an ongoing dispute between us and a neighbouring town Tully – about which was the wettest town in Australia. In hindsight, I have a feeling it was actually Tully – but town pride prohibits me from admitting that – oops – I just did. Anyway, seem's BC has a similar fight going on about who is the “real” geographical centre of britsh columbia. We have driven through Vanderhoof, just west of Prince George. The have it emplazened on their welcome sign! We didn't do more than drive through Vanderhoof. All I remember is one of the hammer throwers at Barkerville on Dominion day said he was from Vanderhoof. Not much a claim to fame really.
We paused briefly at the Vanderhoof Museum. Took some photos of the historic buildings on the site, like the OK Cafe, kids were sleeping so we didn't go in. We still had to get through, Fort Fraser, Fraser Lake and to Burns Lake were we might spend the night. Got a lousy photo of the Fort Fraser welcome sign. Saw a teenager putting out an tourist info sign, so we pulled across the road and I ran over to see if I could get a pin for the kids.
We were in luck (as we have been a lot lately). They had a free pin for the district. In fact we got about 8 pins over the last day or so from info centres and a lot were free. Woohoo. Had to start a new lanyard for Canada as we have easily filled another just with this last part of our trip. We have had the lanyards hanging in the kitchen and around the dining room table, but the sticky hooks havent been holding now it has started heating up. So Le devised a way to have a large hanging area under the big window in the kids slide room. We put about 60 hoooks on a piece of wood – we currently have about 40 lanyards so this will keep us going a little longer. Especailly at the rate we are adding canadian pins and lyanyards.
The Fort Fraser information was in an old blue carriage, as I mentioned before, manned by teenage boys. Brothers it turns out – after an intial akwardness they were more than helpful in my quest for more information about our upcoming route. And turns out they went to Hyder to see the bears about 5 years ago (when they were young) and had got very close to a grizzley bear. They were more than enthusiastic about the experience – so we are looking forward to it more than ever now. We are just patiently waiting for it to get a little later so the salmon are running.
Beautiful lush green farming country around here. After being in the desert up to Kamloops, and still relatively dry up to Prince George, the rolling hills and green pastures are a welcome sight. It has been raining too.
Fraser Lake says it is the world capital for White Swans. The information center is a museum as well. Worth the stop. Very helpful couple. Pins for $1! And large stuffed white swans. They are large. I signed the visitor book and told them about Adelaides black swans – which they knew nothing about. I thought a sister swan city arrange could be made!
A little way up the road we were welcomed to the Lakes District. Which I think is quite funny, as it seems everywhere in BC is a lakes district. In fact we just passed a particularly attractive lake complete with little islands just before we entered the Lakes district. But I waited with un-baited breathe to see the Lakes district :)
At a rest area on the way to Lake Burns, after grimacing about the exhaust coming from a large converted bus RV in the “idle free” restarea – we had the good fortune to meet an photographer on his way to Calgary. He had been in Hyder the day before and happily showed us the great bear photos he had taken just the day before. So there are bears in Hyder – we don't have to stall any longer. We have been asking at the info centres but it really has only been since we got to Prince George that the info centres even knew about Hyder, AK and the bear walkway. So we are excited that we will get to see some black bears and grizzleys, probably early next week. Woohoo. Le has been planning this trip since we were in OK Falls last year. If we hadn't had the problem with needing the whole side of the Sandpiper fifth replaced, we would have spent a month there instead of doing our trip east to the Forest River factory in Indiana.
Unfortunately, it seems this RV (Heartland, Big Country) also has delamination problems (but at least it doesnt have great cracks we had in the side of the Sandpiper. But it is annoying to have great bubbles in the fibreglass none the less. We have been told there is a Heartland dealer in Palmer, AK so we may be able to get it fixed there. The thought of another journey back to RV heartland of Goshen / Elkhart Indiana doesn't exactly fill us with excitement.
It was still raining as we drove through Burns Lake. They had a special flower power VW beetle covered in summer flowers. We stopped and picked up a little free internet from somebody nearby. Checked emails, but didnt have time to post pictures or blogs. Hopefully up the road we will get some good internet. If anybody knows a good mobile internet plan for Canada – that comes with more than 5 mb of downloads!!! let me know!
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