Burkholder BC-Yukon Trip 2001
Northward Ho!
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Day 1: June 14, 2001
As anticipated, our departure didn't take place until mid-afternoon. The morning was spent doing laundry, packing, getting the property and the pets organized for a reasonable level of maintenance in our absence, and trying to get the house elevated from health-hazard status in anticipation of the arrival of the locum physician who will be taking Chuck's place. We rolled up the driveway at 2:03 pm, pretty darn close to our estimated 2:00 pm departure time.
We headed north from New Denver along our familiar local secondary highways. Forty kilometers later, in Nakusp, Noah asked "Is this the place where it stays light really late?" I gently explained that it would be a few miles yet before we reached the land of the midnight sun. North of Nakusp we boarded the free Galena car ferry for a short trip across Upper Arrow Lake. At Revelstoke we joined the Trans-Canada Highway (blue on map) and turned west, heading towards Kamloops. Sophie began chanting "McDonalds, McDonalds, McDonalds!" It rained a lot. We saw a really long train, a lot of motorcycles and some buses. The kids worked on some math and did some drawing and colouring. Sophie practised counting with amazing consistency as follows: "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 8, 9, 10!" Hmmm.
Salmon Arm brought McDonald's, cause for much excitement, as it was the kids' first such fast-food stop since late last summer. Ah, civilization! More rain, though, so we decided to push onwards towards Kamloops. Outside Kamloops we found a campground, popped open the camper, and settled in for the night in a light drizzle. It was light until about 9:25 tonight. The kids played on the computer and with stuffed animals for a while and hit the sack at about 11 pm. They listened to a fairy-tale story tape and a bit of reading aloud from Homesick: My Own Story by Jean Fritz, an autobiography of a young American girl growing up in China during the 1920's.
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| Late-rising Sophie eats breakfast amongst the cushions and canvas of a packed up trailer. |
The morning began with sunshine, hurrah! We got a fairly early (for us) start. We did some start-of-the-year camper maintenance on the plumbing system, draining and rinsing out the antifreeze. Sophie slept through breakfast and most of the maintenance and packing up. Then we decamped and did a bit of shopping, hitting the Chapters mega-bookstore, a once- or twice-a-year treat for our family. We found some of the volumes we'd been missing from various series Erin has enjoyed, and a couple of good back-of-the-van browsing books. The Big Book of Record Breakers proved to be a popular choice throughout the day.
Today's route turned north towards Quesnel, with an evening destination of Barkerville, a restored Cariboo Gold Rush town off the main highway. The Kamloops area is quite arid, with irrigated cultivation near the highway and rivers, but brown sagebrush hills and ranchland in the distance. This vegetation zone is the northern-most extension of the desert system that extends from California's Mojave up into Canada. As we headed north, things became progressively damper and more lush. We saw moose, lots of deer, a fox and some pikas between Quesnel and Barkerville.
We put on a lot of miles today. The kids were happy for the most part, though there was some late afternoon testiness before Noah and Sophie finally fell asleep. We rolled into the provincial campground in Barkerville at about 6:30 pm and snagged a prime campsite right across from the playground. There was a bit of sleet and rain on and off, but most of the evening was clear. Sunset was at about 10:00 pm and we went to bed shortly afterwards, listening to a Naxos audiotape of poems for children we'd acquired at Chapters. I stayed awake through "Kubla Kahn" but I'm not sure about the kids.
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| Miranda, Sophie and Erin in the stagecoach. |
We all slept in and got a late start at the Barkerville townsite. We began with a stagecoach ride throughout the town, from the candy shop to Chinatown and back. Then we spent a few hours exploring the dozens of restored buildings and businesses. The Cariboo Gold Rush began in the late 1860's and much of the restoration harkens back effectively 140 years. There were scores of people (both staff and visitors) in period dress. We ate lunch in Chinatown, bought a Chinese abacus at a general store, watched the blacksmith and some goldpanning, and breathed in the sights, sounds and smells.
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| Sophie, Erin and Chuck on the boardwalk in Barkerville. |
The weather was looking a bit threatening, so we decided to hit the road and get some driving in. We hit snow on the way, with a couple of inches of slushy stuff on the highway. The road elevation is fairly high here, and the weather definitely colder than is usual for June. Better to be driving through snow than out walking around in it in our sandals or trying to set up camp.
Today's drive took us through Prince George, our last real city before Whitehorse.
We made a quick stop at Costco (another annual ritual). We decided not to do a whole lot of driving into the evening, and so we set up camp at a commercial RV camp near Vanderhoof where we could take advantage of amenities like AC power and hot water. Erin's homeschooling liason teacher lives in Vanderhoof, but we resisted the urge to show up in his driveway unannounced and ask for a full RV hookup 
. Evening brought a free-form game of croquet and ome crazy races on the lawn of the campground. Sunset was at about 10:25 p.m..
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| Erin, Noah and Sophie inside the camper |
After more croquet and crazy-racing we headed out of Vanderhoof for a short day of easy westward driving to Smithers. We realized part way there that we didn't have the Cuells' address or phone number and wondered if we were going to have to go to an public internet terminal in Smithers to e-mail them for the info, but fortunately they were listed in the book! We were welcomed warmly by the Cuells, and the kids set to work with some serious play. We visited parks and playgrounds and were treated to a wonderful supper and dessert courtesy of James. I downloaded 300+ e-mail messages and posted the first part of this journey on the web, and we spent a relaxed evening together. Half-dark occurred at about 10:50 p.m. tonight.
We had a great 24 hours in Smithers. We camped in Leslie-Jean and James' driveway, and our kids played happily with theirs (also aged 7, 4 and 2) in the backyard, in the house and in various parks. This morning Erin and I got the chance to accompany some of the Bulkley Valley Youth Fiddlers to a school for a brief performance at a school assembly. Leslie-Jean led the group and we were able to witness their confident performance skills. These are kids I felt I'd sort of known for years through internet homeschoolers' contact with their parents (Rheta, Brenda, Laura, Jane) and through violin teacher discussions and training Leslie-Jean, myself, Stephanie and my mom have engaged in. Afterwards we had a get-together over coffee and doughnuts with many of the aforementioned parents and their kids, plus Linda Rosner and her brood.
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| Noah and Erin enjoying mid-evening sunshine and shadows at Kinaskin Lake |
The weather was wonderful for the first time since we started our trip, and when we pulled out just before mid-day we headed northwest from Smithers, and then made the dramatic right turn at Kitwanga onto the Stewart-Cassiar highway. Suddenly we were plunged into a very different sort of travel, along a remote northern highway flanked by amazing mountain vistas, plenty of lakes and glaciers, and virtually unpeopled. We filled the spare gas can, braced ourselves for the gravel sections and the pot-holes and settled in for a long two days of driving. Signs of civilization were pretty much limited to road crews, and occasional hunting and fishing lodges and gas stations. I'm not sure how much Erin noticed as she spent the afternoon reading two novels from Bruce Corlett's Magician's Quartet series cover to cover.
We found a wonderful campsite at Kinaskin Lake. The kids played with sticks and balls and got repeated changes of clothes wet in the lake. We finally pulled the blinds in the camper at about 10:45 p.m. to keep the sun out of our eyes. Half-dark was probably sometime around 11:25 p.m..
Another day of amazing northern sunshine dawned far earlier than we were awake (sunrise was perhaps around 4:15 a.m.) and we broke camp to continue our journey northwards along the latter half of the Cassiar Highway. We crossed the Stikine River, after which we'd spelled our dog. (We'd named him after writer/geologist/explorer John Muir's dog "Stickeen", in his story of the same name, but had chosen the contemporary spelling of this untamed BC river.) The driving continued to be a combination of gravel, ashphalt, "Alaska tarmac" and potholes, but the day was beautiful and we were prepared for the driving. We spotted moose and black bears and rolled into Dease Lake in time for an early lunch and some gas for the thirsty van. Dease Lake is really the only community to speak of along the Cassiar, and as far as we could see consisted of a couple of motels, a couple of truck-stop restaurants, three gas stations (one with no gas) and a tiny outpost of the University of Northern BC, really just a few portable buildings, apparently containing facilities for community internet access. All the necessary amenities, I suppose. The northern half of the Cassiar Highway was less spectacular in terms of scenery but still lots of fun. Erin read a Jane Yolen novel. We listened to lots of fairy tales on tape, and the kids drew lots of pictures of dinosaurs and other reptiles.
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| At the 60th parallel at last! |
We made good time and we entered the Yukon and met up with the Alaska Highway by mid-afternoon. We celebrated with ice cream cones and picked up some tourist brochures, one of which contained a section concerning the animals of Alaska and the Yukon but with missing upper-case A's in the title, so Erin and Noah had a good laugh over the "nimals of laska". Driving on the Alaska Highway was a breeze, and pretty darn civilized compared to the Cassiar, but still spectacular and remote. We were heading west again at this point, and back towards the "pokey mountains" closer to the coast. We stopped for the night at Rancheria, about an hour from the Cassiar-Alaska junction. The mosquitos were bad at times, but they came and went with the breezes and weren't unbearable. Half-dark occurred at almost exactly midnight and it didn't get completely dark at all; even in the middle of the night it still looked like dusk.
The last short drive to Whitehorse was the work of a long morning. We made for the Takhini Hotsprings just north of Whitehorse for a much-needed shower and laundry stop. The kids had loads of fun in the hot springs pool, where we felt like the human stock in a vat of mosquito soup. Despite ongoing skimming the pool was filled with thousands upon thousands of mosquito carcasses. Erin learned to swim today. She began her afternoon at the pool by confidently dunking her head (something she'd done only with reluctance in the past). She then broke free of the fingers-pinching-nose habit, mastered forward progress using arms and legs and finally added the ability to raise her head mid-swim and grab a breath. By the end of the afternoon she was even attempting an occasional forward crawl stroke.
We had supper at a pizza joint (civilization again!) and afterwards did more swimming. The kids played at a math program on the computer and listened to some stories before bed. Tomorrow we will land in on the Abbotts to properly begin our exploration of the Whitehorse region. Half dark (June 20th) was after midnight. 1:30 a.m. was still partly light, and 3:00 a.m. was the start of dawn.
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