Day 6: 9/21/2010
Seeley Lake to Green lake Campground, 525.5 Miles
http://goo.gl/maps/fgNu

Still on the Yellowhead Highway (Known by Bonnie as other such names as Yellowknife and Yellowfingers...), we hit our first major construction! Still not much delay, but we left the highway in the middle of the construction to go check out Old Hazelton and the Ksan Village museum. We went across one of the tallest suspension bridges in British Columbia, which was built in 1931! It's a beautiful bridge. It was the 4th bridge built there, the first was this crazy string of logs that looked very graceful made by the First Nations people. Cute little buildings in Old Hazelton and some interesting totem poles in the village, along with a few nice exhibits inside. My favorite part was a viewpoint near the museum, with a tiny little sign and a small trail that lead to a lake with mountains in the background. There were all these benches and chairs made from huge logs on the ground. It was very peaceful and lovely :-) Around Hazelton there were a few signs with their motto... "Historically Nonconforming." Awesome motto!

Back to the Yellowfingersknifehead Highway! On to Smithers for lunch at A&W not Family Restaurant :p This A&W is much nicer than the one connected to KFC (ew) in Fairbanks. And the cashier had an awesome French Canadian accent! Along the way we started playing an "I Spy" card game, which has four pictures on each card and you have to find one so you can discard and get another card. It started slow but there were some fast paced competitive moments during the game... But Bonnie won out :-) The end result was 27 to 28 cards.

Soon after Smithers we stopped briefly at the continental divide (don't worry, I took a photo there to mark this amazing milestone...) and read about the Phantom Grizzly Bear! And its cousin... The Grizzly constantly disappeared whenever searched for and they finally got it only 7 paces from the officers trying to kill it... woah... (seriously wide eyed look right now...) Its cousin did not pose much of a problem, but they think it was related because of the size. Yikes! Lol.

On to Prince George! Many fun things to do here. First, does the Ford have time for us... Nope. Oh well, postpone until Tacoma! Next, Canadian Superstore for some reinforcements (tea and granola bars, oatmeal, and non-minty hot chocolate. Yay. Let it be known that this time the Canadian Superstore did not give me any free Loonies... (the one dollar coins, I know where all your thoughts went!). On other occasions I've gotten loonies out of the carts there (at the Whitehorse one) because people don't realize they can get the looney back for returning the cart. Not so this time, PG Town residents are just too smart...

Then to Timmy Hortons for lunch! Mathew had never had it before, and it was yummy. Everybody must try someday. Mathew was confused because I kept changing the name (Timmy's, Tim Hortons, Timmy Hortons) till I compared it to Fred's in Fairbanks :p We got a few Tim Bits for the road and then stopped for photos with Mr. PG... They make it too easy. Stay tuned for the photos... I was quite witty at this point and drove Mathew nuts with all the PG, PG13, and R jokes that can be puled from that.


At Prince George we left behind the Yellowhead (finally got it) Highway and took to Highway 97 for. On the way to our campsite we passed through Quesnel, home of the nasty smelling industrial plant... Nah, that was a bit before town, but it was obviously an industrial town. We passed through when it was dark and were a bit confused by the way the highway loops and weaves though town... But we made it out!

We were aiming for Bridge Lake Provincial Park to camp, but never even saw the sign for that, so we went for a our backup plan at Green Lake Park instead. It was really nice! Seeley Lake of the night before was right next to the highway, so we could hear traffic (though not much) but this one was 11km off the highway. It was a bit breezy, but we got the tent set up and finished our game of Phase 10 with tea and hot chocolate, and some munching since dinner was about four and a half hours earlier. Bonnie won, but it was close! And then to bed!