August 16th

THE WEATHER: The first really hot day we’ve had this summer. It was 90 degrees today with very hazy skies.

THE DISTANCE: 380 miles (or so)


As we left Hyder this morning we met a couple at the Canadian border. Gary knows a little French, Spanish and German…. But this couple were speaking Italian! It was fun to watch Gary try to communicate… and did a pretty good job I might add. We got Gary’s fish all wrapped up and to the post office by the time the plane had landed. Dianna, from “The Bus” restaurant told us she wanted a picture of that mount some day. We’ve got her address… we’ll have to remember to do that. We saw one big black bear on the last few miles of the Cassiar. He was too quick to run into the woods though, to get a picture.

So the scenery today changed quite a bit. We have left the bush and driven back into “civilization”. There are real townships, paved roads, farms, cattle and …. a McDonalds. We even found the World’s largest fly rod in Houston, British Columbia!! Use that the next time you are playing a trivia game. It was 60 feet long with a 21 inch fly. This area is getting pounded with forest fires. The skies are once again so thick with smoke that the mountains around you are obscured. We watched helicopters carrying bags of water fly over head today.

Rick has been telling us about a guy who broke out of jail July 30th in Arizona and met up with his accomplice, also his cousin, and they are causing a pretty big man hunt through the west. A regular Bonnie & Clyde kind of story. Well, I tell you all this because they were last seen in Montana and are thought to be heading towards British Columbia. They like to stay at RV parks and campgrounds! Suddenly I prefer grizzly bear over the dangers of civilization.

Our destination when we left Hyder was Burns Lake, BC… however, we didn’t realize there were no campgrounds in the area with full hookups… which we need this time around. We (ahhem… ok… Debbie) didn’t do her research work very well and we discovered there are a lot of provincial parks in this area but not so many privately run parks that provide full hookups. We ended up driving a “bit” (80 miles to be exact) further and we are staying at “Dave’s RV Park” in Vanderhoof, BC. Gary did say he wanted to get through Canada as quickly as possible.