Day 23, Pemberton, BC

Today we journeyed from a very small town (I’d venture to call it a village) called Lillooet along the infamous Transcanadian Highway 1.

We passed the Sicamous Lake for 33 MILES shortly after leaving Revelstoke. It’s huge, shaped like a capital letter H and is what we imagine Coeur D’Alene to have looked like before housing was established lush. It’s rugged. It’s full of boaters enjoying the 90 degree weather.

Tried our first Tim Horton’s in Salmon Arm. First fast food place we’ve eaten at on this trip and no friend foods on the menu. No fries do go with the wraps and sandwiches.

This arid landscape has a lot of Gold Rush history along the way. Settlements that were major stagecoach routes speckle the drive. After the storms pass (or we outrun them) the sun comes out blazing back to the 90s. The lakes sparkle like sapphires and the road gets skinny, narrow and winding as we work out way up, following the Thompson River which eventually joins the great Fraser River. The journey through Marble Canyon is stunning as well. No places to pull over to make a photographic journey. The ‘highway’ is one lane each way, exposure, so many one lane bridges. I’ve not been on anything like it before.

The drive to Lillooet was intense at times as we followed 99 South after Kamloops. We had tried to stop at the BC Wildlife Park but we encountered thunderstorms, high winds and driving rain through most of that part of the drive. Just passed Kamloops the landscape changes into arid eastern Oregon looking. Massive sand dunes cover nearly every surface that’s not rugged rock or treed. The sand dunes, we learned are from specific wind patterns which drive erosion into the fine rock sands.

Simple named the ‘Old Bridge’ in Lillooet that crosses the Fraser River. It’s closed to anything but feet or bicycles.

Fraser River from Lillooet

The mighty Fraser River is the longest River in British Columbia. It runs from the Canadian Rockies to Vancouver before emptying into the Straight of Georgia. It’s an extremely swift moving LARGE body of water. Not recommended for swimming anywhere, it’s BC’s largest source of salmon and white sturgeon sizes average 500lbs.

Looks like a marmot but in the desert climate of Lillooet? We haven’t figured it out yet.

It’s 98 when we land at Cayoosh Creek. This small campground has power and water. We only hook up to power to cool the place down with AC. We eat dinner ‘in town’. Nearly everything is closed since it’s Sunday evening around 6pm. May’s Chinese is open and May, herself (who appeared to be a 70 year old lovely Asian woman with very limited English) personally cooked our dinner. She also made Tyler turn his parked truck to face the correct way on the empty street. She said ‘police have nothing else to do’. Very sweet.

Before we left Lillooet (pronounced Lill oo ette ) we checked out the campground boat launch which was clearly an off road version of a boat ramp. We waded ankle deep into the eddy and the water was shockingly not cold. Lake Washington on a summer’s day temp.

‘Boat ramp’

We switch to BC highway 99 South to cross over the 4000 ft mountain passes and descend (steeply) into the lovely Pemberton Valley.

We pass Seton Lake which was a stunning turquoise color.

Seton Lake

Let’s talk about what BC Highway 1 South looks like.

BC 1

This highway is narrow with tremendous scenery. We’d highly recommend the north to south route to see the growing glacier covered Cascade Range. We climb up from 806 feet to well over 4000ft and up and back down several times.

The road lanes are very narrow, the road is extremely winding. Like extreme. And you’re challenged to take in the amazing waterfalls, crystal clear creeks, milky blue rivers, lakes and mountains while trying to stay in your lane. Sometimes, your lane is 1/3 gone, falling off into the abyss of a cliff or drop off.

Steepness grades range from 11-17%. Hauling probably 18k lbs for 2 hours – the truck got a serious workout today. We kept smelling people’s brakes and seeing cars pulled over after some of the long descents. We pull into Pemberton around 2pm today. We are staying at Nairn Waterfall Provincial Park. Provincial Parks are Canada’s version of our state and National Parks.

One mile lake is 4km down the road, a turquoise blue swimming lake. The falls in a 1 hour hike from our campground. It’s in the low 80s here. We have no hookups, the whole campground is facility free, so there’s a manual water pump, a dish washing station and pit toilets. That means no trailer AC unless we run during the two, 2 hour blocks. Time to remember what real camping is for a change. The animals were so confused by the heat.

Toasty kitty

Luckily there’s been a consistent breeze all day.

I had to do laundry, desperately, by our arrival today. Coin laundries have been challenging to find on this trip. Many of the campgrounds have not had facilities either. It’s a pretty realistic taste of what we are imagining our Alaska route will be like when we get to take it. There’s one here in Pemberton.

It’s not air conditioned so it’s a bit like a sweat shop. And the coin dispenser has a note on it that it’ll be down for the month of July.

Now Pemberton is a small town, picture maybe the size of Duvall, WA if you’re my west coast peeps or maybe 1/2 of Hellertown if you’re my east coast peeps. Not a whole lot of options for going to find $1 (Canadian) coins.

Met a feisty 60ish lady who directed me to the grocery store manager down the road. Off I went & came back with a $25 roll of $1 Canadian Loonies ( $1 coins).

In the meantime, a 20ish junky rv guy pulls up to do a load of laundry. Parks his not small junky rv front and center to the laundromat. Now I know my truck is massive and always park away from most things so I don’t take up multiple front row spots. Call me silly.

So, this guy leaves both his doors open (for the 2 hours we are here). He is equally disappointed about the coin machine Wang out of order but he is not going to drive 4 blocks to go get coins at the store he just left from. So we traded his American quarters for my Canadian ones.

He’s all chatty (I’m now the only one here but he’s but not creepy) telling me how he spilled bong juice on his damn clothes last night and I now everything stinks. Clearly, it was still seeping out of either his pores or his non bong juice laden clothes that he had on. I was dying laughing inside, clearly this was not a first occurrence for him and I learned there is such a thing as bong juice.

Kellan’s cough is getting worse. Tyler has my strep throat and Haley has diarrhea again. We had been working her back up on the dry food plus the boiled chicken/rice but now we’ll back off and go back to just the boiled chicken/rice. I’m sure it’s probably giardia from the different water. It all started after the stay at Hinton where all the water had a persistent brown sediment quality to it. Or maybe it’s stress from the heat. My strep is recovering but my throat is still not swallowing quite normally, probably was just really badly inflamed.

It will all be fine, we’re happy to be here. Sad the trip only has 10 days left. No one wants to go back to the city except for Eme who would deeply appreciate some cell service and WiFi.

Landed in Pemberton!