A change of scenery

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

BURNS LAKE, B.C. --- What a difference 300 miles can make. This morning, we woke up in Stewart, surrounded by mountains so tall the sun didn't reach the trailer park till well past dawn, and now we're in a flat agricultural region with a few low hills on the horizon.
The change isn't only geographic. When we got to Smithers, we saw our first Tim Hortons since Whitehorse, and at about the same time, we discovered we had the use of our cell phones again! We kind of felt like we had come in from the hinterland!
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Our first order of business this morning, after getting hitched up, was to drive in to Stewart and get the trailer washed. It was still caked with dried mud we had picked up on the Cassiar Highway, and we figured we probably wouldn't see the likes of that kind of road again (let's hope not!), so we should get cleaned up.
Looking spiffy once again, we headed out to the Cassiar from Stewart, passing through the amazing narrow gorge and past the toe of the Bear Glacier, right by the highway, before making the turn south. It was a beautiful sunny day today, with a promise of warm temperatures in the air.
Today was a day of black bear sightings. The first was a young cub standing on the left shoulder of the road, looking at us and then loping back into the underbrush. A few miles later, we saw the ears and head of another cub on the right side of the ditch. Val saw two others several miles apart, but they were too quick for me.
The condition of the highway was excellent, and we were enjoying the smooth pavement when we came upon the orange sign that says "prepare to stop", followed by another that said --- and we both groaned in unison --- "fresh oil"! There ahead of us glistened a stretch of highway that would undo our wash session in the first few feet! Our groans dissipated fairly quickly, however, when we realized that "fresh" was a relative term, and this oil job was not all that recent. Whew!
As noon hour approached, we began to look for a turnout where we could eat our lunch. The highway was quite remote, and we hadn't passed so much as a cabin for miles. The Milepost guide said the next turnout was some distance away. But with the shoulders so narrow, we had no choice but to soldier on till we got to it. Good thing I always make sure to have snacks on hand.
Only a couple of kilometres to go --- and then we saw that familiar orange "prepare to stop" sign again. Only this time, a full crew was laying down fresh asphalt. We sat and waited till the flag person flipped the sign from "stop" to "slow", and off we went again. Wouldn't you know, the long-awaited turnout was right in the middle of the roadwork, blocked off by machinery and filled with workers' trucks! We'd have to go yet another 10 kilometres before we could pull over!
I don't think I ever made a sandwich that fast in a long time. I had flipped open the hard outer door of the trailer to get a breeze through the screen door on this warm day, but when Val came in, he closed it and locked it: as he did his regular spot check around the truck and trailer, he heard some grunting noises in the reeds by the road that were distinctly bear-like. When lunch was done, we looked about carefully to ensure our return to the truck would be uneventful. It was.
Not long afterward, we came to the end of the Cassiar, and turned eastward on the Yellowhead Highway, or Highway 16, headed toward Prince George. There were a number of small Aboriginal communities in the area, some of which had, according to Milepost, some impressive displays of totem poles and other artifacts. Unfortunately they weren't visible from the road, and we had some distance to cover, so we didn't see them.
We did see a sobering highway billboard reminding young girls not to hitch hike alone on this road; then I realized this was the infamous Highway of Tears, along which many young girls had been murdered while trying to hitch a ride from one town to the next. The murderer has still not been apprehended.
For the first time in a long time, we saw farmland by the road, with cows and horses grazing, and freshly mown fields spotted with round bales of hay. There were still the last bits of the Cassiar Mountains on the horizon, including the beatiful Seven Sisters peaks (which looked like seven sisters and a brother-in-law to me; I counted eight peaks, not seven!), and by the road flowed the Skeena River and, later on, the Bulkley River, which feeds into it. We also enjoyed the tall deciduous trees along the way, which we hadn't seen in a long time. There were a number of trucks loaded high with huge logs; logging is one of this area's main activities.
The KOA campground where we're set up tonight is a nice quiet spot back from the highway, so we should get a good night's rest.