I awoke to the sound of a mosquito sucking the blood out of my ear, crawled out of the tent far to early in the morning and made breakfast. We had scrambled eggs with fried prosciutto and onions over the fire with toasted blueberry bagels as we watched the sunrise over Clear Lake. Attempting to shower using our hot water on demand was a complete failure since the battery had drained (I actually never charged it) and all we had was freezing cold water. The lake water was actually warmer then what we had so we soaked in the crystal clear waters of this beautiful lake. We took our time cleaning up our camp and then headed west towards Vanderhoff. Once there we excitedly searched for the bird sanctuary, which we were actually searching for in Prince George the previous day by mistake and found it tucked away behind the small town. The only problem was that there were no birds since it is not the migratory season. Viewing the overflowing river from a watch tower, we could only see some crows picking at garbage on the field. We then stopped for a much needed morning coffee where we sat and updated the blog. Continuing west we reached Fort Fraser which consisted of an old railway car and a couple of houses. The railway car was the farmers market and the tourist info center where we met a very chatty lady who apparently does not get many visitors. One of the cool things in the railcar was this mapping tool shown below, this was used to measure exactly where forest fires were burning in the area.
There were also some really old news papers that had to be photographed.
Continuing west we reached Fraser Lake, here we were in search of an old volcano with red lava rock fields. We decided to stop at the tourist info center and ask for directions. Turns out that the tourist info center is run by different senior citizen volunteers from that area every week and the guy this week had no idea what we were talking about. There was also a museum with really old artifacts from the area and this guy still had no idea about some of the things on display. He actually was surprised when we began photographing an artifact on the wall because he had never even seen it before…. We decided to not ask many questions.
We also learned that there was a guy living in Fraser Lake who likes to create sculptures using lots of staples…..
We eventually found the Red Lava Mountain by ourselves and it turned out to not be very exciting at all (looked like a red gravel pit covered in bushes), we didn’t take pictures.
Traveling further west we reached Houston where the site to see was the world’s largest fly fishing rod. Also in this town there was a 975 lb Grizzly Bear (stuffed) and an old grinding stone which was apparently brought up from Mexico where it was used for the amalgamation of silver and mercury.
Since it was pouring rain in Houston we kept traveling towards Smithers in hopes of nicer weather. Without any luck we arrived in a tremendous downpour as we began looking for our next place to call home. The destination was Twin Falls, which was located on the outskirts of town. Before arriving at the campsite we had to stop because there were two flaggers talking in the middle of the road. After awkwardly waiting and trying to figure out if we were supposed to stop or just drive by we eventually learned that we had to wait for a dump truck coming down the road. This information came from the two wonderful ladies who had a total of 5 teeth….combined.,,, We couldn’t talk too long since it was difficult to take them seriously. We eventually arrived at the campsite where nothing is flat. Since the downside of our tent is that it is at the same angle as the vehicle we used rocks to level out the car. Running around in the pouring rain wasn’t much fun so we called it good when it looked fairly level. Once we opened up the tent we realized that it was crooked as hell and it looks like we will be spending the night sliding to one side of the tent.
We then hiked to the Twin Falls which were spectacular waterfalls falling hundreds of feet down the mountain side from a glacier high above the fog that is rolling through the valley. It was still raining and we were only able to get a couple crappy pictures with hopes off getting some better shots tomorrow morning.
Trying to get out of the rain we built our own little tent city and had some soup for dinner. Crawling into bed at 7 pm we have the tent loaded with food, beer, ipods, books and movies to keep us entertained and provide a one stop shop for any travelling bears as it gets colder and seemingly wetter outside. Our bedding is slightly damp mixed which gives our whole tent an interesting aroma. Tomorrow we will search for some sunshine so we can finally dry everything out after it was packed away wet for the last two days.
We are looking forward to falling asleep to the sound of the rain falling from the trees above us and the sound of water breaking through the threshold of the huge mountains completely surrounding us. A perfect spot to call home for a rainy night.
