Fish!

Last night we stayed at Bunkinghorse Creek in a small, pretty campground.   We got out our poles and put our lines in the water and guess what!  There were hungry fish in it.  In no time at all we had our limits (2 fish each - not that many) and ate Artic Grayling for dinner.  They were delicious and so fresh that we couldn't keep them from curling up in the pan. 

Today we planned on making it to another small campground on a river after we drove through Fort Nelson and picked up our mail.  Wrong.  Our mail isn't here yet.  So we are in a commercial RV park waiting for mail.  Many of the same folks we saw two nights ago in Dawson Creek are also here.  It is interesting as the afternoon wears on to see RV after RV pull into these parks until they are full.  There are people from all over the United States (including Hawaii - I don't know how they pulled that off) in all sorts of RVs.  We tend to be among the smaller RVs.  We often see two couples traveling together in matching newer rigs.  I guess you have to be cooler than us to do that!

We went to a museum next to the RV park which is amazing.  It is privately owned and contains a collection of old cars and trucks and machinery, many artifacts from when Fort Nelson was pretty much just a trading post, and many, many stuffed animals.  Taxidermists seem to be in deamand in BC.

As we get farther north, the trees seem to get smaller and smaller.  Lots of alpine type pines and spruce.  We drove today through miles and miles of just forest (locally known as the bush, eh?).  The forests extend so far without human impact that it makes you feel very small in a very vast land. The ground is covered with many layers of grass killed by snow and has new grass growing out of it.  This creats a strange spoungy feeling as you walk on it.   Now that we are on the main highway, there is just enough more traffic to make wildlife sightings more unlikely.  The locals are friendly, but have a much more reserved manner about them than we are used to.  We asked a young woman at the museum what the winters are like and she said they have snow from late October to early May.  I told her that where we come from two inches of snow shut down the schools and everything else.  She was amazed and said that when it gets too cold here, the school buses can't run, but you are still expected to get to school.

We talked last night to a young couple from Germany that are traveling in a 19 foot RV with their baby.  If you have spent time in Germany, you know that the cars are much smaller than ours and almost nobody drives something as big as a pickup.  The woman told us that the first time she saw one of the big RVs pull up she thought it was a bus, and couldn't believe that only two people got out.

Tomorrow we would like to get Laird Hot Springs for a long break, but we can only leave if the mail comes.  We have our fingers crossed!