Houston, BC to Prince George, BC – 191 Miles
Keep your fingers crossed. It rained a little bit between 4:00 and 7:00 am this morning, and there were no leaks. So maybe the patching and sealing I did yesterday afternoon resolved the issues. I guess we’ll see if we get into more heavy rain. We’re now ensconced in our campsite for the night, and there’s a light sprinkle. I hope it doesn’t develop into something more substantial, but if it does, at least we’ll see how the leaks do.
The highway eastward (actually southeastward) from Houston is a pretty drive through more rolling hills, hayfields, and pastures. It passes through several small towns – Topley, Decker Lake, Burns Lake, Endako Lake, Fraser Lake, Fort Fraser, and Vanderhoof – before reaching Prince George. The towns with lake names are all sited along a lake of the same name, and one of them, Fraser Lake, seems quite large. Also at the town of Fraser Lake is a large sawmill, with stack after stack of cut logs waiting to be milled into lumber products. At the other end of the sawmill are stacks and stacks of cut and dressed lumber of various sizes. It would be interesting to go through a sawmill like that and follow the entire process of milling, grading, drying, and sorting to see what happens before the lumber reaches your local Home Depot.
East of Vanderhoof the land levels out and starts to lose some of its character. It starts looking like any other stretch of highway in the green parts of North America (farm belt and desert southwest excluded). Nearing Prince George you begin to see more and more exurban and then suburban development, although without the junky lots and auto salvage yards that despoil the approaches to many cities in the U.S. Then, before you know it, you come around a bend and down a hill and there’s WalMart, Home Depot, Canadian Tire, and a collection of strip malls. To paraphrase Dorothy, we aren’t in paradise anymore, Toto.
Prince George is the largest city in mid-British Columbia. According to the Milepost, the population of the city is approximately 80,000, and when the surrounding area is added in, it’s more like 160,000. It’s the business and cultural hub of the entire region, with sawmills, pulp mills, chemical plants, oil and gas industries, and, of course, agriculture. The University of Northern British Columbia is also here, and the local airport services at least a couple of regional airlines. The City was founded as a trading post named Fort George at the junction of the Fraser and Nechako Rivers in the early 1800’s, but really got its start early in the 20th century when the Canadian Northern Railroad came through. Prince George is an important highway junction for travelers to and from Alaska in that Highway 16, the Yellowhead Highway, links it to the Cassiar Highway and to the Prince Rupert ferry terminal for those travelling up the Inside Passage by ferry to Haines and Skagway. Road warriors from the west coast and northwestern U.S. come up Highway 97, the John Hart Highway, which is part of the so-called “West Access Route” to Dawson Creek and the start of the Alaska Highway. The two highways, 16 and 97, meet and cross at Prince George.
Our first stop coming into town was the WalMart Superstore on the west end of town. We stocked up on some essential items which we’d been unable to get at the smaller grocery stores in the small towns and villages we’ve been passing through. There were several RVs parked out in the far reaches of the parking lot, and we almost joined them for a night of urban boondocking, but since we knew we’d be dry camping in Provincial parks for the next few nights, we decided to get a space in a commercial RV park with showers, dump stations, and potable water to refill our tanks. Plus, it’s hard to find wi-fi out in the hinterlands. We can do without many of the amenities of civilization for several days at a time, but e-mail and internet are essentials in this day and age.
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