Heading East

Hey, Heather and Jeff have been quiet for the last week and a half.  Wonder what have they been up to?  The short answer is a lot, but not really anything worth a blog post on its own, so we will keep this short and to the point!

After leaving Stewart, we headed east across the Yellowhead Highway and ended up in Witset, BC.  This is a small First Nation community with a lovely RV park and campground with EXTREMELY reasonable prices along with perks such as free laundry and allowing campers to wash their rigs for free right in their site.  For this reason, we ended up staying several nights to get some things done!  Unfortunately, however, this was also our closest experience with the British Columbia wildfires you have undoubtedly heard about.  The mountainside across from the campground was on fire while we were there which meant we were under evacuation alert and needed to be ready to evacuate at any time.  Because of this, we chose to not unhook the trailer and were not really able to explore the area much.  We did explore what we could by foot, though, and the Widzin Kwah Canyon, Bulkley River, and Widzin Kwah Canyon House Museum were all within a short walk of our camp site.  We enjoyed learning about the historic importance of the salmon to the people in the area, and were even able to see a few of the indigenous people actively fishing in the canyon much as their ancestors have done for centuries.

From there we continued along the Yellowhead Highway to White Swan Municipal Park and Campground located on beautiful Fraser Lake.  This was a free campground with nice views, good cell service, and a quiet atmosphere.  We were only planning to stay one night, but we got involved in filming a video and since the park allows two night stays, we hung out for an extra day.

Then on to Prince George.  By this point our grocery situation was getting pretty desperate, so we needed a bigger city with a large grocery store and lower prices than the small towns we had been shopping in.  We had stayed in an RV park near Prince George on our way north in May and had gotten to be friends with the owner, so we didn’t even consider going anywhere else this time.  Back to MamaYeh RV Park we went where Edward greeted us like family!  We enjoyed visiting with him and managed to get our grocery shopping and a few other errands completed so we could be on our way again.

That brings us to Mount Robson Provincial Park.  Mount Robson is the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies and it cannot be mistaken or missed when driving east on the Yellowhead Highway.  It is large and imposing!  Most of our stay in the park was rainy with low clouds obscuring the mountain, but we were able to get a few hours here and there when it made an appearance.  We took some pictures of it from the road and the river bank behind our campground the day we arrived, as well as from the observation point behind the visitor center the next day.  Notice in the photos that there is much more snow on the mountain the second day.  Apparently, what we received as rain in the valley was falling as snow on the mountain!  We would have loved to have been able to get out and do some hiking or more lengthy sightseeing of the area, but the weather just didn’t hold out for that this time.

Now we have made it to Jasper National Park in Alberta. We have been in the park for all of seven hours and we already have exciting things to blog about next time! The Canadian Rockies never disappoint!

Until next time!