Update #1: Whitehorse, Yukon (August 30, 2004)

I didn't mean it.  Honest.

Fraser River, from my campsite at Stony Creek (near Prince George, B.C).  Night 2.

I really meant to put the blinders on & drive straight thru to Alaska, paying no attention to any of Canada.  But I couldn't help it.  Fair weather & some attractive diversions - plus my own inability to get on the road much before lunchtime - conspired to keep me poking around, and (excepting for a couple of hours) I haven't reached Alaska yet.  But I'm close!

A common sight in B.C.

Day one: I pushed up into British Columbia but did manage to bypass the sights, stopping for the night in a motel* in a place called Cache Creek.  *One nice thing about Canada: Cheap motels, as little as $40 CDN (about $35 US after tax). Then north, day 2,  to the geographic center of B.C., a place called Prince George.  I picked up a couple of hitchhikers that day, including a young Indian guy who was on his way home from working on a forest fire, and a sort-of drifter who gave me directions to his cabin on Vancouver Island in case I pass thru on my way back to Seattle).  Turns out British Columbia is pretty damn big (who knew?), and most of it is trees. Hence the countless logging trucks coming & going at all hours.

Greer Falls, illustrating how shutter speed works.

On the third day, after poking around Prince George for a while (not much to see there - a combination of strip malls bordering a slightly depressed downtown with lots of pawn shops & thrift stores), I had to choose between continuing north on the more traditional track towards the Alaska Highway, or (at the Vancouver hitcher's recommendation), turn west, where I would encounter nicer & less touristy towns until I turned north onto highway 37, on which I would encounter pretty much nothing.  So I headed west - but didn't really get very far after all.  I stopped for fuel in a town called Vanderhoof & dropped into the tourist office - and learned of the vast array of forest-service (dirt) roads that lay just south of town, dotted with lakes, hiking trails & resorts.  So what the hey, I took the map I was offered & figured I was off on a two-hour detour, after which I could still make a few hundred miles on my way.  Yeah, right.  After viewing some of the dull exhibits along the road (the forest service provided a map of pullovers), I stumbled on a hike that the tourist-office girl told me about - a 1.5 mile round trip to the waterfall featured on the brochure.  It was a pleasant little hike - the first of the trip.  Of course, after lingering to eat my lunch & wait for the right light I'd used up most of the day - it was late afternoon by the time I got back to the Jeep - so I started looking for the little rustic (free) campground described on the map.

Unfortunately, turns out a typo on the map mislead me, and instead of the intended lake, I ended up at the entirely wrong lake and campground - which turned out just fine, as I got to the edge of Lake Lavoie just as this was going on:

I barely got my tent set up, what with having to take another picture every five minutes!

Lunchtime (can anyone identify the bird?) Update: Sister Susan thinks it is an osprey.

Another great thing about British Columbia: Free firewood at the campgrounds! I think the loggers have a deal to supply wood to the province in lieu of money ...

Lake Lavoie was so pretty, I lingered there all the next morning, taking pictures of - and listening to - the loons and ducks that live there.  And I caught a great break: Just as I was fiddling with my camera & new telephoto lens, a shadow moved overhead, then plunged into the water 50' in front of me.  Seconds later it (hawk? falcon?) emerged & flew off carrying a huge fish!  I waited for a couple more hours for another such show before I finally packed up & continued the tour.

But even then I didn't make it out of the area, for I found another hike I'd read about: Cutoff Butte, the highest point in .. well, the vicinity.  Didn't sound like too much: 2 miles round trip.  But I learned a lesson about being prepared because, although short,  it turned out to be one of the more arduous hikes I'd done!  The first hint of trouble was when I got to the trailhead & realized that the brochure had hit me with another typo: The hike is 2 miles each way, not round trip.  Err, okay, I can handle that.  But I also didn't take into account the generally poor condition of the trail - the first half was gradual & forested, but the second half contained most of the 700' elevation gain along narrow ledges and crumbly rock jumbles, and the only-occasional markers.  Or the rain squall that rolled in just about the time I reached the summit that forced me to take cover, huddling, on the lee side of the butte for a few minutes.  The good news is that I had brought rain gear.  And I really learned the value of a hiking stick, a sturdy pair of boots, and a big goofy rain hat.

Cutoff Butte.  Doesn't look so bad from the ground, does it?  But it looked a little different from the top.

And I still didn't make it out that day!  After hiking the butte I made for the highway - but found yet another hike I had to take (to another waterfall) with yet another convenient (free!) campground.

Bear glacier, on the Stewart highway.

The next day I finally resumed the highway & for the first time really put the pedal down, working my way most of the rest of the way west on highway 16 thru several towns (there were nice after all), then turned north again. Now I had truly found a whole lotta nothing; highway 37, mostly but not always paved, is basically a narrow corridor through pine forests - a place that really says, "If you want to disappear & never be found, take 10 paces off this highway."  With only one tiny gas station every hundred miles or so, you would find it difficult to travel at night there. 

I made it!

Yet even here a diversion claimed me, for the woman who runs the cafe in unincorporated Meziadin Junction advised me to follow a side road to the small town of Stewart.  What the hell ... the road was lined with amazing glaciers, and at the end Stewart was a cute if touristy little hamlet.  Oh, and you can drive 2 miles into Alaska!

Yup, the "ghost" town of Hyder, AK, is a short drive across a small spit of land.  The best sight there: A small observation platform over aptly-named Salmon Creek - and was it ever the right time to visit!  Two breeds of salmon are in mid-spawn right now, and the creek was jammed with them!  Bank to bank, you could almost walk across the creek on their backs and never get wet. 

Spawning - and spawned-out - salmon.

If you check the picture carefully (R), you'll see salmon treading water mid-stream as they spawn - and many more dead or dying fish along the banks, or stacked up along rocks.  This spot is also, as you might imagine, prime bear-viewing territory as they come in from the woods to feast.  Unfortunately there were no diners while I was there - one fellow speculated that all the bears in the area were already gorged on the feast, which apparently filled the rivers & streams for miles around.  The big attraction, there were a half dozen folks sporting very serious video & photographic gear, waiting patiently.

Highway 37, northern B.C.

I probably should have waited for the bears, but I was getting antsy - I didn't want to have yet another day with little real progress towards Alaska, so I decided to hit the road in a totally misguided notion that I could make Whitehorse (650 miles!) that day.  Well I did make it as far as the Yukon border by nightfall, marking the furthest north I'd ever been.  It was raining, and as you can see in this picture (L) there was nothing much on the highway worth seeing.  I crossed into the Yukon & got on highway 1 heading west around 10 p.m., but didn't get much further. Taking our interstate system for granted, I had to stop for the night near the continental divide as I didn't have enough gas to get beyond the next gas station, and they would be closed!  Too wet & cold for camping, I slept in the jeep at a rest area.