Hyder, AK to Kamloops, BC

HYDER, AK TO KAMLOOPS, BC

8/4-7/2012

As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, there is only one road to Hyder, so when leaving there, we had to retrace our drive. That was OK because it was a beautiful day and I got some really nice pictures of some of the glaciers.

We had no idea how far we would drive each day as we intended to be in Prince George or Williams Lake, BC so we could get the truck serviced. Little did we know that this was a holiday weekend in BC (BC Day) and none of the dealerships would be open until Tuesday, 8/7. We had some time to kill. We ended up staying one night in Frazier Lake and one night in Williams Lake. 

Frazier Lake was a nice experience. We found a free municipal campground (no services) located right on the lake and about a mile from a high school that had a track. We were able to use the track to do our running and then enjoyed a beautiful view of the sunset across the lake. The next morning, we went by the visitor center to use the dump facility and to tell them how much we appreciated the campground. In Willaims Lake, we had planned to stay in their visitor center parking lot, but it was too noisy so we stayed in their Wal-mart parking lot which was located in a quieter area.

The area from just before Frazier Lake and just past Williams Lake is beautiful rolling hills with fields of hay. I have never seen so much hay and so few cattle or horses. I asked at the visitor center what they did with all that hay and was told that there were many small cattle ranches back off the main roads. This area also produces much of the wood products that are used in North America. There were many huge sawmills and other wood processing facilities.

We are now Kamloops BC which is a large city. We were in shock when we saw that the temperature was in the 90s and since we have been experiencing highs of 50-60 for the past 6 weeks, we are feeling it. We found that there are no campgrounds nearby and most of the big box stores do not allow overnight parking. We finally learned that Canadian Tire Company stores do allow parking and that is where we stayed last night. We needed to kills some time waiting for the temperatures to go lower, but we waited a bit too long. We found a university track where we went to run. A thunderstorm was threatening and sure enough, about 1.5 miles into my run, the sky opened up for about 30 minutes. After the storm passed, I finished my run. The track facility had a very nice restroom and I was able to wash my hair and take a sponge bath while Hollie kept a lookout for me.

Today is Tuesday and Hollie just returned from the Toyota dealer where he learned they would not be able to service it until 1:30 this afternoon. Since it is Toyota of Canada, we will have to pay and then get reimbursed (hopefully). We may try to find a Y where we can work out and shower and then get the truck serviced before heading on down the road.