July 21 Prince George, south, Fruit

Sunday, July 21, 2013

53 degrees this morning but nice and sunny as we continued south on 97.  We are seeing more hayfields and lots of logging and wood processing facilities – saw mills, pulp mills, planer mills, plywood plants,  huge lots of logs and now we see signs that show logging trucks along with the tractor signs.

Arrived at Prince George and stopped at Fort George Park, a very nice city park with gardens, a small train, a water playground and native cemetery. 

  Continued on to tiny town of Hixton where we were told there was a very nice waterfalls.  Stopped at a flea market for directions.  Yet another windy, rutted gravel road for Greg to maneuver over!  We stopped and walked the last part of the road and then the trail to the Falls.  A fair number of locals – the man at the flea market said “everyone and his dog” would be there since it was not (74 degrees).  There were lots of dogs.

The Falls were nice and we got our cardio workout for the day.

Beginning to see more irrigation and read that the land is fertile but dry – just add water and they can grow anything!  Stopped for some “Fresh B.C. Cherries” – yum.

Williams Lake has a ranch and rodeo museum and we are seeing advertisements for rodeos in many of the small towns.    Many of the towns  on this road are named for how far they were from the start of an old  stagecoach route, so we passed through 150 Mile House, 108 Mile Ranch, 100 Mile House, etc.  Random buildings along the way will have the mile painted on them.  We stopped for the night at 100Mile Hotel & RV Park.  They had showers and a few washers and dryer, so we got everything cleaned. Here are two of our more colorful neighbors. 

Wi-fi was terrific outside so I got caught up on the blog.  Gourmet canned beef stew for dinner.

Monday, July 22, 2013

Blueberry pancakes this morning before we hit the road again.  First stop was Chasm Provincial Park, north of Clinton.  This was a neat canyon with lots of color layers due to old lava flows.

Next we took a side road to Loon Lake.  Silly me thought there might be loons there – it was a windy road with some steep hills and canyons. 

The lake was huge and very developed with cabins, fishing resorts, etc.  Mostly pretty rustic, but some gorgeous homes.  No loons.  We did see this sweet deer with a fawn on the way back.

Came to the "Painted Hills", nice views.

 But most of the hills were more like this.    Can you spot the train?

The countryside has become very dry – reminds us of Wyoming.  Lots of irrigation, though and green fields.  And occasional lakes.

After we reached Cache Creek and turned south, we began to see signs for fruit.  Had to stop at a U-Pick Raspberry place and paid $1 for a pint of berries. 

  The lady there said we picked the right time to come through BC.  The next 100 miles were filled with orchards and vineyards.  Apricots, Plums, Peaches, Blueberries and veggies too.  We got more cherries and some peaches too.

Signs say we are on the Winery Route and we must have passed at least 25-30 wineries before we got to the US border.  Also passed several very large lakes, like Kalamaka and Okanagan (nearly 80 miles long).  Many resorts and towns with the related businesses, retaurants, stores, malls, etc. – and traffic and traffic lights.  More lights today than we saw on the entire trip thusfar.

We stopped at Provincial Park near Osoyoo but it was full.  The camphost offered his parking spot, but for $21 we decided to find a free parking spot.  Turned onto Rt 3, thinking it would be less traffic, more rural, only to find ourselved climbing mountain after mountain.  The Trek, poor thing used to sea-level Houston, overheated and we had to stop for a while so had dinner.  Greg finally found a great boondock spot at 7:30 and we settled in.  Temperatures this afternoon hit the 90 mark – we want to turn  back to the North!