Thursday 7/23/98
Day 1: Seattle, Canadian Border, Fraser River, B.C.
Here is a trip report from our second trip that we took to Alaska. We decided this year to explore the southeast panhandle, as we drove around mainland last year. We would drive north thru eastern British Columbia, spend some time in the Yukon and then come south by ferry and drive back from Prince Rupert. This trip was planned for 19 days to accomodate ferry schedules, but Cindy and Jacob will say I used that as an excuse to strecth out the trip as long as possible. We left Renton at 10:00 am as Cindy picked me up at work. It was overcast this morning, but expected to reach 80 degrees. There were very few traffic problems at this time of day, as we made it to Blaine around noon. We exited the 'truck crossing,' route to cross the Canadian border which we've found is usually much faster. They had us go inside to answer a few questions. They seemed to be mostly concerned about whether we knew the route we were going, the road conditions, had enough money and that Jacob was our son. We were aware of the gravel roads, had $500 US money, planned on reaching Alaska in three days and Jacob admitted that we were his parents. ,After answering those questions they let us go without any problems.
We drove north on 15 until reaching highway 1 and then drove east. We turned north atAbbotsford and drove on the north side of the Frazier river. This took us into the business district of Mission,which is a nice little city with a population over 20,000 in the Fraser Valley. 
The town ofMission is becoming a suburb of Vancouver as it has easy access from highway 1. We eventually got back onto highway 7 going east and went past some good farming land along the river. We drove through the small communities of Dewdney and Deroche and eventually came to the town of Hope. Hope has a population of 6,000 but seems much larger because it has many hotels and four highways coming into town. It is a good pleace to stop for the night and get dinner if it's getting late. But it's only 3:00, so we left town and started driving north along the Fraser Canyon.
The Fraser Canyon is one of the nicer scenic drives on a clear day as you overlook the river valley while going in and out of tunnels About twelve miles north of Hope is Emory Creek Provincial Park that is right along the Fraser River. It looked like a nice place with 36 camp sights and still spots available on a Thursday. A couple miles north is the town of Yale, which is where we stopped for ice and to rest. This town has a lot of history from the gold rush years with a museum displaying steamboats, Chinatown and Fraser River. We always seem to get here after the museum is closed, some day we'll get to see it. We continued and at 5:00 pm we stopped at Alexandra Bridge to took a trail down to an old bridge. The bridge was rebuilt in 1926 to replace the suspension bridge that had been there since 1863. The road we were driving on had only begun to have a trail built in 1862 as the river was the main route of transportation back then. It was becoming hot this afternnoon as we noticed on our walk back up the hill to the truck.
We continued past Spuzzum, Hells Gate and on towards Boston Bar where we took the bridge across the river to North Bend. Boston Bar was named in1858 after Americans discoverd gold here and a small community was located near the river. Businesses started moving up near the new traill in 1863 and have been there since then. 
North Bend is currently a small community that has a lumber mill close by on the river that is their main source of income. There were only a couple gravel roads near North Bend so we turned around and continured north. We drove for another 30 miles before coming to Lytton where the Fraser and Thompson Rivers merge. What is now a small community used to be a tent city around 1860 for gold miners along both rivers. We turned right and were now following the Thompson River.
We made a note of where the Goldpan Provincial Park was off of the highway, since late one night a couple years ago we couldn't figure out where to turn off for this campground. We ended up spending that night, one mile north of the park down by the river, where there was a good view of the railroad tunnels across the river. If you choose to stay here though beware, the trains go by at night making lots of noise.
At Spencer's Bridge, we stopped for pop at a little convience store where they were out of everything cold except a couple cans of root beer. We bought those and found out from the cashier that is was over 100 degrees today. Spencer's Bridge was named after a person by the name of Spencer who built the bridge in 1865 so they could eliminate the ferry. Prior to 1865 the place was called Cook's Ferry. As we continued the terrain looked very much like a desert. Cache Creek was the next town we entered and it is also in this desert terrain. As you come into town the first thing you see are piles and piles of logs, which looked really strange since there were no trees around. There are several restaurants and motels, as both highway 97 and 1 merge into town. You will also see many acres with black tarp covering a crop. This is the Chinese herb gensing, which is very popular in the U.S. and Canada. On the way out of town we saw irrigated farms and several small lakes before getting into the town of Clinton at 6:00 pm. The clouds started coming in and we noticed it was cooling off. We ate dinner at the Wolf's Cry Inn, (TexMex, buffalo, and venison burgers). They had slow service and their Caesar salads were not good. It will be the last time we eat there. Clinton likes to consider itsef the typical country western town.
Back on the highway we turned left on a gravel road two miles out of town onto the Big Bar Lake Road. This is a gravel road that leads to several large ranches on the plains of British Columbia. 
There are also many lakes in this area and roaming cattle that you may need to stop for. We turned around after 10-15 minutes, deciding that we would need gas before going too many more miles. On highway 97 again we went to the Chasm Provincial Park and took a trail that overlooked the canyon. It was 8:30 pm, about an hour too late for the sun to hit the canyon walls. At 100 Mile House, a good size town with many motels, we got gas. We continued north and got to Williams Lake at 10:00 pm. Getting dark, we decided to looked for a hotel. There were lots of vacancies, but we didn't feel like paying $55-75 plus tax for a room on our first night. After driving around for a half hour, we drove up Fox Mountain Road. Lots of large, mostly undeveloped lots. It seemed to be a teenager hangout. Drove around for a half hour and finally found a place to pull over for the night at 11:00 pm.