Stewart, BC to Houston, BC – 247 Miles
We bailed. We’ll probably regret it because who knows when and if we’ll ever get back up this way, but the constant rain just got to us (and the Tiger). It rained all day yesterday and most of the night. Camped as we were in the midst of a rain forest, even when it was not raining it was foggy and misty, and the thick canopy of trees overhead caught the moisture and constantly dripped on us all night long. Then as we woke up this morning it started raining again. Everyone says this has been a very unusual summer up here, rain-wise, and I can believe it. I don’t remember if I mentioned it before, but the day we chose to visit Juneau was the record-setting day of rainfall for that date. The real problem, however, was the continuing leaks in the motorhome. The leak under the window was back with a vengeance, plus we even started getting drips from the range hood. Of course the nagging little drip in the bathroom continues, but it’s not a real problem because it just drips on the shower floor. When we went to take a shower, the lady in the campground office at Stewart said the forecast for today was more rain than yesterday, so we said forget the bear-watching in Hyder – we’ve seen enough bears to last a lifetime – so we decided to get the heck outta Dodge, so to speak.
The dive back up the canyon was just like yesterday, except of course we were seeing everything from a different perspective. The clouds hung in layers along the canyon walls, giving the whole scene a mystical feeling. If anything, there seemed to be more waterfalls tumbling down the sides of the canyon. At one point we counted at least a dozen in a stretch of a half mile or so – every crease in the mountainside seemed to have a little stream tumbling down, down, down until they were lost from view behind the trees lining the roadside. Back up we went past Bear Glacier – we didn’t even stop for more photos this time. Happily, by the time we reached Meziadin Junction, where the Stewart-Hyder Highway meets the Cassiar, the rain was starting to decrease, and the further south we got on the Cassiar, the lighter and lighter it got.
There is nothing really notable to report regarding the last 98 miles of the Cassiar Highway southbound to the Junction with BC 16, the Yellowhead Highway, at Kitwanga. The road is in excellent shape the entire way, two wide lanes with adequate shoulders. There is one short bridge that is quite narrow -- and only wide enough for one-way traffic, but traffic never seems to be a problem on any of the roads up this way. And the land widens out; to be sure, there are still mountains on both sides of the road, but they are set back a ways and not as steep and rugged as we’ve been seeing until now. The area has been heavily logged – mostly in the 1980’s according to signs posted here and there along the sides of the road – so the forest is mostly second-growth, medium height conifers of a type or types I couldn’t identify, but probably some variety of fir or hemlock. When the hillsides are visible, it’s easy to see the extent of the cut areas. However, the logging was done long enough ago that the regrowth has taken over and there are none of the ugly scars that the media likes to show when they talk about logging.
As soon as you hit the Yellowhead Highway you’re back in civilization. Good-bye to the wilderness portion of our journey. It’s like suddenly passing through a portal into another dimension. More cars and trucks on the road; more houses, barns, fields, and livestock; more signs; more fences – in short, we’re back in the world again. Not that it’s bad, this is still a very beautiful area – lush and green, with sizeable mountains along both sides of the highway, some still bearing patches of snow near the tops. There’s even one last small glacier to be seen, high up on the side of a mountain as you enter the town of Smithers. Like most of the highways we’ve been on for large portions of this trip, the road follows a river, in the case the Skeena River for the first several miles, and then the Bulkley River, a tributary of the Skeena, after that. There was one interesting sidelight along the way before we got to Smithers: at the small town of Moricetown, the Bulkley River is squeezed into a narrow gap between a pair of rock outcroppings, creating a fierce rapid. Migrating salmon are forced to negotiate a small channel at the side of the rapids, and it’s here that native fisherman have traditionally netted salmon for centuries. I’m sure it’s still a subsistence thing to some extent, but they’ve also made it into a small-scale commercial operation with a roadside stand selling fresh-caught salmon (right from the river, clean ‘em yourself) and smoked salmon. A couple of young men stood precariously on the rocks with long-handled nets, scooping two or three salmon from the water with each dip of their net. We watched from up on the bluff at the roadside, and then just had to buy a sample of the smoked salmon for dinner tonight.
It’s at Smithers that civilization really smacks you in the face – all the fast-food chain restaurants, Safeways, car dealers, the whole big (relatively speaking) city shebang that we hadn’t seen since Whitehorse, Anchorage, and Fairbanks. Smithers also marks the end of the mountains until we hit the Canadian Rockies east of Prince George as we approach Jasper. The landscape is now rolling green hills, dotted with hayfields and pastures; beautiful country for sure, but definitely not what we’ve gotten used to “up north.” We can tell for sure that we’re in the autumn of our journey.
It was a long day of driving, trying to outrun the rain. We finally pulled off for the night at Houston, BC, about forty miles southeast of Smithers. We’re at a nice little RV park with reliable wi-fi, clean restrooms and showers, and – a true indicator of the tame surroundings – no bear-proof waste containers. We spent a couple of hours on maintenance chores, Jeanette doing inside cleaning and me attacking the leaks for the umpteenth time, before settling in for a nice light dinner of smoked salmon, crackers, cheese, and a glass of white wine. The salmon was good, but we both agreed that it was not as good as the smoked sturgeon we had in Oregon two summers ago.
Jeanette’s Addendum: I would like to add that I have never seen such beautiful hanging baskets of flowers as at this campground. She (the hostess) has trailing begonias of every color imaginable and they are huge. There must be 20 or more baskets hanging around the campground office with three large beds of multiple kinds of flowers gracing the surrounding area. There is also a greenhouse where she is growing beautiful tomatoes of various sizes. Needless to say I took a lot of pictures.
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