Highway 37/ June 25

This poor guy looked like he had been out a little to long the night before.  First he was grimacing, then he had his eyes closed, and then he succombed.   We waited for about twenty minutes, and he still had to do this all day long.

Highway 37 was another eye candy experience. We traveled the entire 500 miles in one day, and at no time was there not beautiful mountains and scenery to awe over. We started in the shorter spruce forests, and moved into mixed pine, fir, hemlock and aspen. And we saw animals! Lots of bears crossed our paths including one HUGE grizzly that did not look soft and cuddly. In fact, he looked quite fearsome and I was very grateful that I had metal all around me, a big engine and a horn, even though it is a wimpy horn. I was completely flabbergasted at how fast such a large animal can disappear in the underbrush.

The entire road was littered along the edges with bear scat. I can only speculate as to why the side of the road. Do the bears think that the road is a long latrine? Or is this a statement about their opinion of the road and its users? Maybe it is a game; see who can run out of the woods, deposit their scat and run back in the woods without being seen? Or, though a somewhat scary thought, maybe there are so many bears that the woods, roads, and everything else are equally covered in scat!

Out in the middle of nowhere, we passed a jade store. When we were in China, there was lots of carved jade in the markets. I very carefully carried some carved horses back on the airplane. But now, I know that British Columbia, in the area we were in, produces 90% of the world’s jade. We stopped to satisfy our curiosity and saw piles and piles of raw jade. If I were walking in the woods and came across a jade boulder, it would never cross my mind that it was a valuable stone. It really looks very plain before cutting and polishing. Those who know me well, and those who read between the lines of this blog, know that I have a thing for moose. I have one in my car and several in my house. Of course there was a very nice jade moose with antlers made out of gold – I loved it! Until I saw the price, $1195. This picture is all I will take from the store.

In 500 miles, we passed a total of 4 communities. All appeared to be First Nation communities. Two had approximately 50 people and the other two were really only a store and gas station combination. (At one of these we paid $1.69 a liter for gas which is about $6.26 a gallon.) They were quite far apart and isolated. I can only guess at what life in these communities would be like. We also began keeping track of the names of streams that we crossed. Now, the soapbox part. We passed 47 streams and only three had names that could have been named by indigenous people. Maybe ten white people live in that area. What happened to all of the original names of the streams. And it’s not like we creatively named the streams. We have such classics as 1st North Fork, 2nd North Fork, 3rd North Fork, Dry Creek (which wasn’t) Hotel Creek, Black Creek, Blue Creek, Spruce Creek etc. I do wonder how Baking Soda Creek got its name. There must be a story there! We also had a spirited debate about whether streams, creeks or brooks are bigger.

We reached Highway 16, heading towards Prince George. We couldn’t find a place to camp until we arrived in Smithers, BC which is another 60 miles down the road. We are exhausted and ready for bed AND it got dark about 11:30. It was the first darkness we have seen in three weeks!