Prince George, BC, Canada

Good afternoon, my friends! I'm starting this post from our stop for the night in Prince George, British Columbia. I won't post until tomorrow morning, however. For now, I want to caption my photos while it's all still fresh in my mind. We can finish our chat over coffee in the morning. Okay? Okay.

So we left Lone Butte fairly early. We had a shorter day of driving today...just 211 miles. We drove BC Hwy 97 heading north for the entire day. As I've mentioned, we're traveling a gold rush road, and so we're seeing a lot of rustic structures...barns, cabins, sheds, and the like...some inhabited or in use. Some are abandoned. Some have fallen flat on the ground and live on in piles of roofing materials. It was a gray and rainy day for a good part of the day's drive, and so most of what I'm going to show you will be of the rustic structure type. Starting with this...

Not too far into the journey, we passed through the town of Lac La Hache. And I took French in high school, which was absolutely forever ago. I know Lac means "lake," but I had to look up the "La Hache" part of the name. As it turns out, it means "Lake of the Axe" and was named during the fur trade era, after the unfortunate incident of a French-Canadian voyageur who lost his axe head while chopping a hole in the ice. It is a town rich in history, as it sits along the Gold Rush Trail. Another story would have us believe that a mule carrying a load of axes fell through the ice there. You can decide which story is more believable. We stopped there to get a look at the lake. Looking left, it looks like this:

Looking right, it looked like this:

Looking out a distance, I could see a lone loon. We heard these calling last night while we were camped in Lone Butte.

If you've never heard the call of a loon, you can listen right here. And if you can't see the video, then click right here.

Okay, and driving on...more rustic barns and other structures.

As we crossed over a ridge, we were treated to the sight of a pretty valley.

We were approaching 150 Mile House. And this is just one of many numbered "mile house" towns. The number indicates the number of miles away from Lillooet on the Cariboo Waggon Trail...or the gold rush trail.

This is what our Milepost publication says about it.

Driving on, we came to Williams Lake.

Here's the story about how it was named.

We saw these signs all along the day's drive, but the only "wildlife" we saw were domesticated horses and cows.

We stopped off at a rest area, where I saw the biggest dandelions I've ever seen. They were about the size of a silver dollar.

Continuing on...more rustic structures.

Mike tells me this kind of a structure was once used to burn sawdust from lumber mills. Nowadays, the sawdust is pressed into boards.

Eventually, we crossed this bridge over the Quesnell River. (The "s" in that word is silent.) Sorry about the cracks in the windshield. I'm afraid that's going to be the case with some of my pictures. 

There's the river. 

We might have stopped to explore this footbridge, except that it was raining hard. We were close to our final destination, and we really just wanted to get off the road.

Here's what the Milepost tells us about it:

And here's a better picture I found in the public domain.

(Image credit: "Quesnel Old Fraser River Bridge" by cmh2315fl is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.)

We had a late lunch when we were set up for the night. We like a cup of espresso after lunch. Mike found this nifty espresso machine. We can actually make espresso going down the road if we want to. So far, we haven't used it that way, but we used it to make two cups of espresso after lunch. It uses those pods, which I hate, but we can also be more ecologically-minded by making our own pods. Mike used his 3D printer to print the stand we're using to hold it upright.

It was our first time operating it in the RV, and the kitties sat up and took notice at this strange new sound in their environment.

So that's all I have for you this afternoon. I wanted to back up to my meeting with Terri. She gave me a gift of some patterns, and I absolutely love these. They're going to be fun to stitch. These are from a Canadian designer.

This one is just one block in a larger quilt.

I found the rest of the blocks online. Here's the rest of the quilt:

Cute, huh? But wait...there's more.

And this book.

Paging through, here are a couple of the quilts I thought were just too cute.

Cowboy cats!

So...I'm gonna have fun stitching those. Thank you, Terri. These are absolutely purrfect!

And speaking of stitching. I have some time now to do some slow-stitching. I haven't done any since before leaving home. I'll hold onto the draft of this post for now and we can finish chatting tomorrow morning.

* * * * *

Okay...hey, it's morning now. Good morning, my friends! How is everybody doing? We're on our way to Dawson Creek this morning, and we'll be spending two nights there. If you guys are ready, I'll finish off what we did yesterday afternoon. Everyone have a full cup of coffee? Okay. I have just a little more to tell you.

Smitty was getting restless, and so I asked him if he wanted to go outside. Well. He perked up significantly at the sound of those words. Did he? Yes! Usually he runs and hides when I get out the harness, but yesterday, he started his walk the way he always does. First, we must give the scratching pad a good scratch. One must have sharply honed murder mittens when one ventures into the great outdoors. And then he let me put on his harness without any struggle.

Outside, he sampled this Catnada grass. Mmm, mmm, mmm. He isn't picky when grass has been scarce.

Our walk lasted all of about 2 minutes, when he got up on the steps to be let back in.

Sadie, open the door, woudja?

Inside, Smitty was served treats of valor. Sadie was served treats of appeasement. 

If you're new to traveling with us, I should tell you that Sadie is an escape artist, and so she lost her going-outside privileges many miles ago.

We're hoping for improved weather today. This was what I saw out our window this morning. Red sky. Hm. Sailor take warning. Well, we'll hope for the best.

And if you've enjoyed reading this post, you can thank my copy editor, Smitty.

That's it from me this morning. We'll be doing a little more sight-seeing in Dawson Creek. I have a couple of must-do things on our itinerary, and some this-might-be-fun items as well. Also...there is a quilt shop. Cool. So...I should have some things to tell you about that don't equate to driving all day long. We're just getting started on this journey. There's plenty more to see down the road.