Day 3 – Tuesday, July 3, 2018
Lac La Hache, Williams Lake, Quesnel, Barkerville
We left Lac La Lache early in the morning and I counted a few more mosquito bites. By the end of the day I had bites on the following areas of my body:
- forehead (2)
- face (2)
- neck (4)
- arms (2)
- legs (1)
- ankle (1)
Conclusion: Mosquitoes have seen too many Dracula movies. Also, mosquitoes suck. That is both a joke and a statement of fact.
Barkerville was our destination today and we planned on doing it in two stages, with stops at Williams Lake and Quesnel along the way.
We stopped at Williams Lake to buy a few more groceries, filling out that “inevitably forgot something” list. Sadly they were sold out of those clip-on mosquito repellent things. I suspect it would have worked in reverse on me, anyway, but it would have been nice to have at least tried it out.
After that we had a quick break at a “rest area” (really, just a place to pull over) where I took yet another shot of the dandelions that grow by the millions along the highways.
Our next destination was Quesnel, but we only stopped to get gas from a station that had full service. I didn’t even know those still existed. One day all gas will be pumped by Amazon drones that magically descend from the sky to your moving vehicle. The guy who filled the tank smiled. The weather was pleasant and in the high teens, so maybe he was happy about that.
From there we ventured off Highway 97 and onto the winding Highway 26 to our last destination, Barkerville (technically the Lowhee Campground, but it’s only 2 km away from the town).
It started to shower and Jeff got to test his now newly-installed wiper blades. They worked very well. The temperature fell from 22 to 15. The showers stopped as we got to the campground, only to find we had power but no water. This did not please Jeff. Options were considered. Brows were furrowed. We took the stop and set up camp after realizing that exactly one camping spot out of 87 had both power and water. Not surprisingly, it was unavailable.
We consoled the loss of water with hot dogs for lunch. Also, the public washrooms are conveniently across the road from us, in case we feel like flushing someone else’s toilet.
The weather continued to be a mixed bag, but slowly improved, with the sky clearing and the sun coming out.
The sunset was very dramatic and very pretty. The colors in the photo below don’t do it justice, nor does it illustrate how rapidly the colors went from vivid red/orange to gray.
Here’s an earlier shot of the sunset, with people in the distance walking the campground loop:
And our first official campfire of the trip. Hooray!
The fire danger level here is actually Low, which means the chance of a fire ban coming into effect while we’re here is basically zero.
To feed the fire, we followed a Forest Service access road and chopped up some legal deadfall. Well, Jeff chopped, I loaded the truck, as I am not to be trusted with a chainsaw.
Before dinner we road our bikes along the 2 km path to the Barkerville Reception Center. And yes, it was uphill all way—literally. It was much faster coming back. We paid for the campsite, two days of Barkervilling and had hamburgers for dinner. Yes, hot dogs and hamburgers on the same day. How can you tell we’re camping?
We did a few more walks around the campsite, had s’mores around the fire for dessert (of course), then retired for the evening at the ungodly hour of…10:45 p.m. I was hoping to see the sky filled with billions of stars by this time but it was still too bright. If I went back out I’d probably just add to my bite collection, anyway.
Tomorrow we go to see Barkerville. I will be wearing head-to-toe netting.
