Day three in British Columbia – May 25th

Well, today we paid our dues. We decided to take the westerly route to the Yukon and had been told that six miles were unpaved. HA! Most of the way through the north BC is “sort” of paved but not really. The GPS kept calling it “unpaved road”, but some of it passed as paved but had no stripes down the middle, not to mention the sides of the roads. Ugly, spoiled Americans that we are. The really good thing about taking the route through the wilderness is that we saw some really good wildlife. We saw two rabbits, three ptarmigan (birds), one mouse, six mule deer, one caribou and NINE black bears. Hope to see a grizzly tomorrow or the next day. Today was not much fun for me because of my phobias of water, heights and Cliff’s driving too fast for conditions. My stomach muscles are probably improved over yesterday.

The picture of the bear shown here cannot be topped. I couldn’t believe my luck to find a bear actually doing its business in the woods! Do you think I laughed and bounced in my seat??? You would be correct if you guessed yes.  There was no Charmin handy or rabbits with Teflon fur.

We made our first sighting of another Great Alaskan Holiday RV this afternoon when we stopped in some really remote spot of 58 +/- residents to buy gas. BTY, that gas was $5.76 American dollars. Oh well, we can’t just abandon the RV on the side of the road, can we? Besides how would we get to Anchorage to catch the plane home???

We are in a Provincial park tonight by Boya Lake and it is beautiful!! The generator has decided to be persnickety so we had to deal with cold butter. Hope Cliff can find the solution in the morning. If not, we’ll cope. We had trouble with the generator last year too. This is why Great Alaskan Holidays lets us rent this vehicle for much less than regular – we call it a “shake-down” cruise. Working the bugs out before they rent it to people who pay full price and expect excellence.

Some of the areas that we passed through today were very depressed and showed signs of poverty. Sadly, I suspect most of them were inhabited by indigenous people. Not an expression of prejudice, just the facts.

Tonight, we had the third of our meals on the rainbow trout that I caught. It was augmented with fresh tomato and Vidalia onion over rice. Delicious, the leftovers will go into a bear-proof trash can tomorrow. New food tomorrow.

On the subject of bears: We could not believe our eyes when we sighted the second one and saw that a van was stopped by the bear which was very near the roadway. A woman was standing in front of the van taking pictures of the bear. She had a very long lens on her camera and I failed to see why she was standing within 15 feet of the bear and needed that sophisticated equipment. I was able to get a great shot with my plain camera (see right pic) and I did not put myself or the bear in peril. Let’s say the bear attacked her, who would be to blame??? What an idiot. Can’t imagine what was so important. Silly me.

Here is a picture of the typical road on which we travelled today. Does it remind you of a rollercoaster? Me, too.