Houston BC (Shady Rest) to Kinaskan Provincial Park BC

 

Seeley Lake Prov Park picnic area

This post is coming a bit late due to lack of cell reception in the areas we travelled yesterday. We're currently in the Watson Lake Visitor Center, in the Yukon, using their WiFi. Today's journey will be in the next post. 

We had another of our early starts yesterday morning, both up at 5am PDT. Sounds awfully early, but that's 8am EDT, and we had gone to bed last night by 8:30 PDT. So that's 8 1/2 hrs of sleep. We do think our bodies are still on Ontario time somewhat, so that lends itself to early to bed, early to rise, out this way. Great washrooms led to a leisurely start about 6:15 under sunny skies.

We soon started getting hints of upcoming mountains:

Every river we've seen has been rushing, at or above any previous "normal" high-water marks. This stream looked very active:

Before too long we stopped at Seeley Lake Provincial Park for the views there. When heading out in the sunny morning with the sun at our backs the snow-capped mountains just glow:

The Skeena River was going strong, as we started North on Hwy 37:

We dropped in to the road to Stewart BC (part of the Stewart BC Hyder AK towns) for a breakfast at the Bear Glacier. We had been in to Stewart/Hyder on a previous trip, so didn't go all the way in this time. There are some great views, but we saw no bears this time:

Carrying on back on Hwy 37, the mountain views just kept coming:

I was attacked by a gang of Black Flies for this and the next picture

What a hero eh! The first real Black Flies of the trip.

We came across what looks like a recently-built airport to support mineral exploration etc in the area. What a setting for this fine-looking gravel airstrip:

With such an early start today, we felt the need for a somewhat early stop, about 3:30. We usually try to stop by 4 pm anyway, to enjoy our stop and get some good downtime. This time we stopped at Kinaskan Provincial park, a real gem of a place. Basic facilities, but great sites on a beautiful lake:

The lake had a lot of pollen floating on the water, something we've rarely seen. I'm not sure what trees were doing it, but there was lots of pollen, depending on wind direction:

Cathie woke us both up about 11:00 with a bad dream. When we realized how light it still was, I took this picture:

Natural light, right about 11 pm PDT

We didn't stay up to see how dark it got, but it was sure light at 5am.

Here's how a vehicle looks when the bugs start to wake up. We did our best to wipe out as many as we could on our drive:

There would have been a lot more pictures in this post, but most were on Cathie's phone, and unfortunately it died in the afternoon. We can't get it started at all, or connected to a PC, so those pictures may be lost. We'll be trying to sort out an alternative real soon, but meanwhile any texts or calls to Cathie's phone number will not be received by us. My phone is still working ok though.