Next morning, we head off down the road, south, into the vast stretches of mid-central British Columbia, Canada. On highway 37. Heading for Prince George. Vast areas of treed mountains & valleys dotted with the occasional lake. Very few homes spotted along the way, in fact, didn’t see hardly any roads other then the one we were on nearly all day. In the early afternoon we came upon this road construction. There was 30-40 kilometers of ripped up road that was just graveled. At least they’d already graded the surface most of the way so it was somewhat smooth. Near the end, going no more then 30MPH, there was a huge bump followed by a dip that crossed the road. My RV went UP, then DOWN. Felt like a roller coaster ride. Lots of compression. Which is what I believe caused my tire to blow out a few hundred miles later.
Another long construction area.
This stretch was typical of the entire roadway in the construction zone. The road that wasn’t ripped up was in pretty bad shape so the work was certainly needed, it’s just I could have done without the bumpy ride. Our slow speed wasn’t a problem since I had no schedule and my brother had two weeks of vacation with more then a week left of it.
We pass a huge lake, didn't see a single house next to it.
You might notice that this area has lots of pine trees, but they’re not the size I’m use to in the Pacific Northwest. Stunted like.
Here's the same lake, only miles later.
The same lake, I believe it's Dease Lake, we stopped to do a hike up into the hills. There is a provincial park here.
Just off of the trail.
An hour later and it's back on the road. The park was a nice place to have lunch.
Dease Lake turned out to be 25 miles long. Not very wide though, a few miles at best. The rest of the day was uneventful. I don’t remember where we stayed that night and I don’t have a picture of my RV set up in a campground for the evening of the 5th. This area of BC is lightly populated and RV parks are few and far between but we must have found someplace to stay since I don’t remember boondocking it. Sometimes we could go for an hour without seeing a building, road, or another car for that matter.
The next morning we continued on south on highway 37 to Kitwanga and then east on highway 16. There were many small towns along this stretch of highway and we stopped occasionally to sample the local brews or do some tourist shopping. One time we passed some road construction in a small town, their equipment was making lots of noise and Dan makes a wise crack about how I should pull over and fix my flat. Sure enough, 25 miles later, I get a flat. He jinked me. I got the flat (blow out) on a two lane highway without shoulders so I backed the RV up to a farmers property and pulled in off the road. Went and talked to the farmer and got his permission to park there while we got the flat fixed.
Getting ready for the emergency road service guy to change my flat.
Getting pad ready for a manufactured home.
Turned out that the farmers son was getting married and several people were working on doing some fill work around the trailer pad shown above, which was to be their new home after the wedding. The kid was there with his fiance. Pretty cute the way they hung onto each other the whole time they were zipping around in a big farm loader scooping up gravel and dirt and filling in holes.
It was a beef farm of 1000 acres.
After 3 hours, the ERS (emergency road service) truck showed up and the guy put my spare on in short order and off we went. Cost us 4 hours overall and it was getting late so we stopped at a bar in a small town around 5:30 and had dinner. After dark we headed over to the local city park and set up for the night without services. I believe we were in Telkwa that night.