Prince George, BC, CA
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Gorgeous, sunny day, 80
We started the day with Sandy preparing a breakfast of pancakes with fresh strawberries. Then, Bill updated the website while Sandy got a walk in and did some reading.
In the afternoon we drove into downtown Prince George. Stopping by the visitor center, we were directed to a place for lunch and a few places to visit.
First on the list was the Railroad & Forestry Museum. After going through an indoor history of museum, itself, we went outside where the good stuff was. There were all manner of automotive, fire fighting, railroad and other paraphernalia, some of it really unusual.
Cottonwood Island Park, sited along the Fraser River, with walks through the woods and out to the river, was pretty enough but not really inspiring.
Sassafras Savouries, the Visitor Center’s recommendation for lunch, was quite nice. We got our goodies to take out and headed for Connaught Hill Park. The entrance to the park was a bit of a chore to locate but this park was inspiring. It is beautifully kept. Located in the middle of town, it overlooks the entire city. To boot, it has beautiful flower gardens near the entrance and in a couple of islands inside the park. We found a parking place near the picnic tables and enjoyed our lunch and a tour of the gardens.
On our way back to the campground we stopped at a stand to purchase some fresh produce from Okanagan Valley.
That evening we roasted marshmallows and chatted with nearby campers, Jackie and Dave. Back at our camper we enjoyed a post-marshmallows light dinner of corn on cob and sautéed chard with garlic. Unfortunately, the chard was tough!
Prince George to Cache Creek, BC, CA
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Gorgeous, sunny day, low 80s
After a quick breakfast at McDonalds we headed back out onto the Yellowhead Highway and then onto the Caribou Highway.
Along the way we came onto a couple of curiosities including the “World’s Largest Gold Pan”, the welcome sign for the town of Quesnel (kwe NEL). Quesnel is a timber town, a huge industry in this area. We saw acres and acres of stored logs, sawmills, plywood producers with product ready to ship and mile-long trains loaded with finished product.
Another curiosity was the Williams Lake Tourism Discovery Center. This was the most elaborate, small-town welcome center we’d ever seen. The town is home to a couple of log building construction companies and they joined forces to build the center as a showpiece for their art. It is a massive log construction that includes soaring ceilings, a log home within the center and beautiful, huge cedar logs. Inside, there is also an ad that features an incredible pile of outdoor gear piled on top of a Subaru Outback. Williams is Famous for the Williams Lake Stampede, BC’s premier rodeo.
Our drive gradually transitioned from crop farming to grazing meadows to high marshes and meadows with lots of small lakes. Closer to Cache we got into a dry mountainous area spotted with lush, green, irrigated fields surrounded by dry, sparsely vegetated hills.
We camped at Brookside RV Camp in Cache Creek. After consuming our chicken stir-fry dinner we put on a show of our videos of salmon-eating bears at Anan Creek for many of the campers near us. It was a fun time as they oohed and aahed our videos and shared bear and camping adventures of their own.