Day 2:Prince George, Peace Valley, Ft Nelson
Spending the night on a wooded lot in Williams Lake we woke up at 4:00 am. Drove north on Highway 97 through Quesnel, which had several hotels with vacancy signs. Quesnel is a neat town, relatively large compared to the surrounding area. The Fraser and Quesnel Rivers meet here, so there is lots of water right in the middle of town. This is also the turnoff going east to Barkerville, a former ghost town which has been restored and is now a popular tourist site. Continuing on Highway 97 north, we stopped for gas in Prince George at 6:30 am. Prince George is one of the largest towns in this region, boasting 117 city parks. It also has a population of 80,000 and is an industrial town centrally located in British Columbia.
We continued north and and would stop at Crooked River Provincial Park to rest. This is 45 minutes north of Prince George, near the small town of Bear Lake. This park has a large (90+ campsites) but pretty quiet campground, with three lakes near by. The ranger said the campground does fill up on the weekends. The trees north of Bear Lake were tall with short branches, rather ugly. McLeod Lake was a large, long lake with an island in the middle. Whiskers Point Provincial Park was at the south end of the lake.
We would start driving in the Lower Peace Valley region as we turned north at the Highway 97/39 junction toward the logging town of Mackenzie, which is eighteen miles north of the junction. The town is located between Williston and Morfee lakes and is also known for having the world's largest tree crusher, used when building Willliston Lake. It is a man-made lake that was formed when Bennett Dam was built.
We took a gravel road to Alexander Mackenzie's Landing which was a campground and picnic area along the Williston Lake. This gravel road continues quite a ways, following the lake shore. We turned back south toward Highway 97 and continuied east until we stopped at Bijoux Falls Provincial Park. These 40 meter falls, were visible from the parking lot. It was a ???? type water falls that fell over layers of rock. It was also a good place to stop for a rest. Going over Pine Pass, a pull-out leads to a trail with a good view of Azouzetta Lake, which had several islands with trees on them.
At Chetwynd we stopped for gas, exchanged $100 American for $147 Canadian (pretty good exchange) and found a KFC. This town is known for their chain-saw sculptures. Took Highway 29 north, stopping at Moberly Provincial Park to eat our lunch at picnic tables near the lake.
There are 109 campsites and lots of trees for privacy. We got some drinking water from a pump before we left. It started getting cloudy but was still warm. Continuing on Highway 29 we drove through the small town of Hudson's Hope and stopped at the Peace River Dam and then the much larger W.A.C. Bennett Dam that was built in 1967. We stopped at this Dam's visitor center. They had some neat hands-on displays about electricity. Their free underground bus tour of the powerhouse takes an hour. We would have to wait another 30 minutes for the next tour, so we kept going. We stopped at the Trapper's Cabin Picnic Area.
Highway 29 from Hudson's Hope to Fort St. John follows the Peace River and the canyon.
The road climbs steep hills overlooking green valleys with forests of short green trees and tall dead trees with bleached white trunks. We went 8 miles past the Highway 29/97 junction and into Fort St. John. This town had a lot of unpaved alleys and since it hadn't rained for a while the town was quite dusty. The weather was starting to clear up, but was still breezy. Fort St. Johnhas lots of businesses but looks like more of an older town that is trying to remodel. We stopped at the Fort St. John Museum's giftshop, but didn't go into the museum ($2 for adults/$1 for kids). We decided not to go south to Dawson Creek which is where mile 0 of the Alaskan Highway starts. Instead we started driving the Northwest Peace River region as we went north on Highway 97 and stopped to cook on our campstove at Mile 80 Rest Area. We talked to a couple who take care of the rest stop. They were quite worried about the year 2000 computer problem and what it was going to do to the Canadian economy. They were nice people but seemed to be a little to worried about the future. We drove through the tiny towns of Wonowon and Pink Mountain, where we stopped for gas at 7:00 pm. The small community of Prophet River had a cute little red and white church.
At 9:00 pm we reached the relatively large town of Fort Nelson.
This town was set up like Ocean Shores, WA; with a wide main street and narrower streets with accesses to businesses on each side. The museum on the way out of town looked interesting. The sky was clouding up and we got a few raindrops. We took Highway 77 north, the Liard Highway, which was gravel looking for a campground.
This highway goes through an Indian Reservation and eventually takes you to the Northwest Territory. After going several miles we decided to turn around and try to find a place to pull over for the night. Thinking we'd found a large cleared area to pull over we took the truck down a hill. Going back up the hill the truck got stuck on a hump of dirt. This was at 10 pm as the sun was going down. It was a beautiful sunset, but we weren't interested in it now. Mosquitoes were everywhere. We decided Jacob and I would wait out on Highway 77 and Dale would start walking south on 77. We didn't see a soul for a half hour and then one truck came from the north and two more came up from the south. All three trucks had occupants from the same First Natiions Tribe in the Northwest Territory. The first truck had two women and some kids and didn't stay. The other two trucks had guys who helped push the truck up and off the hump. Dale talked to one of the men for several minutes. He said you have to take things 'slower' in the Yukon. I also talked politics with him as the Northwest Territroy will be splitting into two provinces next spring. This will be to give tihe eastern natives governing rights to their own province. We went back about 18 miles into Fort Nelson and got a motel for the night.