Canada, the southern route

British Columbia: August 29 - September 7

along the road up to Whitehorse

Leaving Skagway I made it north to the Wolf Creek Campground south of Whitehorse. It's drizzling and it's a cold night in the tent.

Whitehorse is the capital of Yukon with over 25,000 people. I would have liked to explore it a bit more but the weather made me want to continue south. They have a good Independent Grocer store and I found a decent laundry. After chores I continued south into B.C. and a campground next to Boya Lake.

one of 7-8 black bears I saw in one day along the road

I made it south all the way to Stewart the next day as the cloudy, chilly, rainy weather made it good for nothing but driving.

northern British Columbia

The endless two-lane road goes through endless forest with the occasional town or general store with gas bar, usually near large lakes. This country is so big and so vast that it hardly seems I made any progress though the map tells me different.



It was getting dark around 9pm at this stage of the trip and I only made it into Stewart at 8:15. The main campground was overflowing with those large rv tour buses so I found a spot off the road to pull into and crash for the night. At least it was free.



The road to Stewart that branches off the main highway, about 36 miles of it, is a beautiful drive with glaciers, waterfalls and the rushing river that the road follows into town. I saw several more black bears along this road, feeding on clover according to the ranger I spoke to the next day.

Bear Glacier near Stewart, B.C.

The glacier in the photo is called Bear Glacier. Even though it continues to shrink, I thought it looked a bit familiar. The waitress at the restaurant Toasters told me they filmed some of the movie 'Insomnia' here and that that was the glacier near the end of the film.

inside Toasters, good breakfast

Toasters even had a signed photo from Robin Williams on the wall. She said that when they were filming in the area that they (Williams, Pacino and Swank) would come into town for meals but that they slept on yachts in the bay. That's what I would have done. There isn't much in the way of accommodation in this little town.

back into Alaska

In my Alaska post I said I wasn't quite done with Alaska. It turns out you drive right from Stewart into tiny Hyder, Alaska. You don't even have to go through customs (on the way back into Stewart you do, though). It was drizzling when I drove over about 8am.




You can read about Hyder on-line, but it's most famous for Fish Creek where sometimes there are a serious number of brown bears in one place trying to catch salmon. That morning there were none. You can also get hyderized at one of the bars, but it was too early for that (you need to drink and keep down a shot of 151 or buy a round for the house).

showing Hyder at the very bottom of Alaska

This is also the town for people trying to drive to all 49 states in as little time as possible. Hyder is at the very bottom of Alaska making it technically feasible.

my campsite at Red Bluff

My next stop was at a campground called Red Bluff next to Babine Lake, another giant lake that I never heard of but that's over 100 miles long. I stayed here three nights hoping to wait out the bad weather for good. I got to know Dave, who has the contract to run and maintain this campground. He told me a story about a face-to-face with a grizzly bear in the campground a few years earlier. A young family was confronted by this bear, he heard the screaming, and ran towards it. He said the bear made like to charge a couple of times and got within 10 feet, or so, but eventually it walked away. Dave said he drank a fair amount of whiskey that night. 

The town of Granisle, which is where the campground is located, has a visitor's center where you can buy a great hot shower for $5. There is also the nearby Babine Lodge where I had French fries with an awesome brown gravy. Just like in a Jersey diner!

at the spawning channel

On the way out of town I stopped at the Fulton River Spawning Channel, supposedly the largest in the world. There were a ridiculous number of salmon trying to make their way up this channel. And there was one woman inside a little shack that's built over the channel counting those salmon with a handheld clicker. She even came out to talk to me while clicking at the same time.

some of Fort St. James alongside the lake

Before reaching the large town of Prince George I made a detour up to Fort St. James, an historic site that is maintained as a living museum. They have a small restaurant serving period food and I had some stew with a very good cornbread and iced tea, an excellent deal. You can pay a very reasonable fee to spend a night in either the bunkhouse or manager's house ($70 or $100/night). That price includes two meals in the restaurant. The beds are a bit small if you're tall, though. I was able to spend a free night in the nearby campground of Sowchea as the manager told me it was closing for the season the next day and he didn't feel like doing the paperwork.

one sign, three critters

southern British Columbia

Under more rainy skies I stopped in Prince George for groceries and made it all the way down to Williams Lake, where after two weeks of mostly disappointing weather, I got a room. Enough is enough.

the canyon south of Cache Creek, with train

Further south of a town called Cache Creek the road winds through a beautiful canyon that follows the big Thompson River. Freight trains follow this same route.

my last bag of Old Dutch

The next day I drove into Whistler, a town I had been looking forward to. The fog almost hid the ski area completely from view and the cold rain made walking around a total drag. Man, I was having the worst weather in history! So, down to Vancouver where I got to enjoy rush hour (about 90 minutes of it). British Columbia owes me bigtime.