Hope to Williams Lake
Our first RV breakfast was buttered (peanut butter in Debbie’s case) toast and orange juice - quite a departure from the huge diner breakfasts we’re used to having on these road trips. We had our first RV showers too. It works OK, but it sure fills the grey waste water tank quickly. Our RV has separate tanks for waste water. “Black” water is what’s been flushed down the toilet, and “grey” water is what’s run down the sink and wash basin. These must be drained regularly, which was our next job. We managed to avoid any disgusting mishaps involving faeces, and before long we were beyond Hope, on Route 1 North.
Our main guidebook, Hunter publishing’s “Alaska Highway” is quite scathing about the scenery on this approach, but the Fraser valley is really spectacular: vast mountains, white water, tunnels to drive through, and railway tracks following their own route along the canyon walls. We stopped for a tourist attraction: Hell’s Gate. Here, the normally wide Fraser River narrows to form a churning, deep torrent between two rocks. A cable car crosses the canyon at this point, giving spectacular views, and taking you to a small area designed to separate tourists from their cash. Once believed impassable (hence the name), anyone can go on a raft tour through Hell’s Gate now. Not only that but it has been uglified with huge concrete fish ladders, after a rock fall caused by railway works in the 1940s blocked the route for spawning salmon. Although this does detract from the beauty of the place, it’s still pretty damn spectacular.
We looked at the water. We looked at an exhibit about the fish ladders. We bought a fridge magnet. We returned to our route.
Somewhere in the Cascade Mountains, I stopped to look at a view, only discover that there was a restaurant right there, with a terrace overlooking the view. I worried that it might be expensive (we didn’t check the menu before being seated), but I needn’t have. I had chicken quesadillas, and Debbie had a mushroom swiss burger. Debbie took over the driving.
We left the mountains, and found ourselves in the Cariboo region. Every time I hear or read this word, the Pixies tune runs through my head. This is much flatter, rolling countryside, though not without its share of lakes, wetlands and forests. It didn’t fit my preconceptions of Northern Canada (though we have much further North to go), and that was nice. Somehow in my head I was prepared for nothing but ever more spectacular vast mountains. Variety is good.
Along this route, there are a number of towns named simply “x Mile” where x is an integer. These apparently relate to the distance from a site where gold was discovered, causing a gold rush. These places were colonised by people trying to find the next seam. At “100 Mile House”, we stopped to buy petrol. We bought it at a “Husky” petrol station, because the name is novel and amusing to us. Of course it refers to the dog, not the voice, which is why it has a dog as a logo, and not Mariella Frostrup.
We drove onwards, stopping in Williams Lake. By rights, we should have pressed on - we want to make it to mile zero of the Alaska Highway proper, in Dawson Creek, tomorrow. However, there were doubts as to whether a big annual show in the next town, Quesnel, would make it impossible to find a campsite, and so we stopped.
Given a choice between a campsite in town - the Stampede Campground - and others out of town, we plumped for the former. The campsite is attached to the racetrack where Williams Lake’s “famous” annual Stampede rodeo is held. It’s in a natural arena, and the rest of the town is basically a strip mall. We ate at Denny’s (I spell it wrongly here - by rights the apostrophe should be a maple leaf), a short walk from the campsite, and it was, well it was Denny’s.
In retrospect, all this was a bit of a mistake - there’s no reason to sit outside the RV as there was last night. In future we’ll plump for the out of town campsites. Of course this means we don’t need to pay particular attention to where there are towns. Campsites seem to be sprinkled all over the region.