Wednesday September 6th
In the morning, Hannah and Andrew came by on their way to work to open up the church so I could clean up and use the facilities. It was so nice of them, and we were able to say goodbye properly. From there I started up into the mountains, with quite a bit of anticipation. I was excited at the prospect of going through the Rockies and seeing them close up!
I’d picked the campground to be on the outskirts of Vancouver towards my next destination, to give myself a bit of a head start, since it was quite a long drive. Thankfully the church was also on that side, so I didn’t have to go through Vancouver traffic on my way out.
After leaving the suburbs of Vancouver, and driving for about an hour and a half, I came to Bridal Veil Falls, one of several falls with this name scattered about. It was a beautiful spot, quite high falls, with a short walk to it through tall forest. I climbed up a steep track to get a closer look at the falls.
The mountains were looming as I drove on, and I stopped about an hour later at a little town called Hope, which is where the four-lane highway split off from Highway 1. The main route up north went off as Highway 5, and Highway 1 ended up as the scenic route. Though Highway 5 was quicker, I was after the scenery, so of course I followed Highway 1, which then was just one lane each way for most of the way.
Hope had beautiful scenery, the wide Frazer river ran through it, and the sun was shining through the mountains beyond it. I tried to get down to the river, which turned out to be harder than I expected – there seemed to be a lot of private property along there. But I found a little track going down to the river’s edge, and took some photos there, of the river and mountains. There was someone fishing a little way along, a very peaceful scene. The railway ran through it – a railway that was to follow me in my travels through the Rockies, almost everywhere I went!
Another hour along and I was well into the mountains, near a place called Hell’s Gate, where the Frazer River channelled into a narrow pass. There was a cable car that went across, a bit of a tourist spot. I had contemplated going across there, but time was getting on, so I drove on, after looking down into the gorge with the river far below.
As I continued on, something unexpected happened. The lush landscape turned into something quite desert-like, with rocky outcrops and bare ground with something like saltbush growing through it – a landscape that wouldn’t have been out of place in Arizona, or up around Port Augusta. I guess it must have been some kind of rain shadow. This lasted for a couple of hours or so of the journey. There was even a town calling itself a desert oasis. The river ran through there, and there were some irrigated areas, that stood out as green, among the barren landscape. I stopped at a fruit stall by the road and got some delicious peaches. Maybe they were grown in one of the irrigated areas.
I had lunch at a high spot overlooking the scene of the river, irrigated areas and barren landscape, then drove on towards Kamloops Lake. On the way, I went through a burnt area, where a bushfire had raged through, I think only a couple of weeks before, and had crossed the highway. There had been signs warning of big delays, and I waited for about half an hour at a roadworks traffic light near the burnt area, but this was apparently still the best route. I guess they were repairing the road after the fire. Eventually I was able to go on.
Kamloops Lake is very long, and relatively narrow compared to its length. At the far end of the lake is the fair sized city of Kamloops itself. I had a look at the lake close up at a park that bordered onto the water, at the end furthest from Kamloops. There were mountains, or large hills bordering it all around, and while I was walking on the beach, an enormously long train was working its way along the ever-present train line that at this point went around the lake.
The terrain was still fairly barren, though not quite as desert-like as it had been. I had a look a little further along at the lake at an overlook next to the road up on one of the hills, with a good view to Kamloops in the distance, and an also distant tall smokestack to the right of it with smoke coming out, giving the scene a slightly industrial feeling.
The highway went around Kamloops and joined up with Highway 5 again. It was still just one lane each way though. I’d been heading east for a while, and now went north again. The landscape started to get back to being more lush, as I drove another couple of hours or more, admiring the beautiful river views in a couple of spots, on to the little town of Clearwater, and my destination for the night, Dutch Lake RV Park, which was just out of the town, over a small bridge.
I checked in, then just a short drive out of there was Saphat Falls, which I thought would be worth having a look at. I wasn’t prepared for just how grand the landscape was! It was quite a narrow, deep canyon, which I looked down into from some viewing areas, and a narrow but very long waterfall plummeting out of a forested gap in the rocks, down some sheer cliffs. A bit further along there was a lookout along the valley that the river followed, beautiful with hills covered in pine forest going way off into the distance.
I got back to the park before sunset. It was next to a lovely lake, small by Canadian standards, but still a decent size. There was a small jetty where I enjoyed the views before making dinner. They had a restaurant there, but it was closed for the season. A lot of things seemed to close up after school went back in. There were some shelters where people could cook or eat, which would be handy if it was raining, which thankfully it wasn’t. The Lord kept on providing beautiful sunny weather.
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