Spences Bridge to Marble Canyon, and on to Ashcroft (2 days)

Another Last Spike memorial

This post will be a bit long, sorry about that. Even with ruthless culling it's been hard to get the number of pictures down to a moderate number, and we had no Internet or cell service at the Marble Canyon campground yesterday.

 

Looking across the river from our Spences Bridge campsite

A closer look at the campground we could have stayed at last night, with the rail line above

A few pictures on the road to Cache Creek:

Lots of eroded hillsides

If it's a green field, it's likely being irrigated

The main roads and railroads typically follow the rivers

It's hard to see the tunnel here for the rail line on the right shore

Here's a closer view of it

Notice the drain lines here, running down from the road

Without those drains the road likely floods, and engulfs the lower sections. When it rains it sometimes pours.

Last Spike details.

 

We decided to turn in to the little town of Ashcroft for a tour. What a pretty town it is. There's an atmosphere there that we liked, very artsy-looking, we saw no graffiti, it just looked cared for. 

We stopped at a lovely town park, created and maintained by many volunteers, many of the art works credited to locals. A prime vandalism target if there ever was one, but no signs of any. It's kinda sad when lack of vandalism is a pleasant surprise:

Bridge to the town across the Thompson River, flowing fast and high

Looks like an old train station anchoring the park, with rail yard behind it

A mural interpretation of the town site

Log cabin recreation built in 1999. A caboose for the rail heritage.

There were several mosaics displayed, all outdoors:

This one based on an A Y Jackson painting of Ashcroft

This one memorializing the first CPR train through Ashcroft

A local church had some nice stained glass works. Unfortunately it was locked up so we couldn't get pictures from the inside:

More mosaic on a bench outside the church

There were mines in the area too, giving trains something to haul. This retired dump truck is huge even by today's standards:

A strange tree bark we couldn't identify

Another strange tree. A remarkable accident?

Ashcroft supports their grad classes:

Moving on down the road....

This cliff is being mined away...

Providing aggregate sales for this native band

 

We had an early camp at the tiny campground at Marble Canyon Provincial Park, covering a whole 102 km today. The park itself is some 360 hectares, with several small lakes and hiking trails, a lot of which looked vertical. 

We saw some people hiking a trail up the hill behind our van:

Mama duck and her brood prefer the lake though

What a place for a tree to grow

 Map for Day 1. Google's time estimate was WAY low today:

Today we travelled almost twice yesterday's distance, heading west and south to Lillooet and Lytton. An amazing drive, very varied terrain. Lots of hills and lots of ranch land.

A lonely-looking ranch house

A lot of today's drive was along a huge valley

Those white crosses left of the road were actually anchors to keep the hill from sliding down and taking the road with it.

A communal swing set for a native band meeting or bbq

We started to see some snow at the higher elevations. We didn't see any close up though.

Looking back down at the road we just travelled

The rivers can get quite wild when confined (just like Cathie, haha)

This road construction made Cathie very nervous. We'd have had better pictures if Cathie could bear to look at the edges as we went. :)) She was doing her best Jann Arden imitation at times, when Rick Mercer is making her do something scary.

The one lane got quite narrow, and no shoulders in places:

 

Just a few kms after we got through this, we met a transport with a flatbed trailer full of plywood sheets, grinding its way uphill and heading for that construction. It boggles the mind how the truckers out here cope with the hills and roads, sometimes with double trailers on. 

My hat goes off to them. Give them lots of room folks, especially when they are turning corners.

Seeing snow-capped peaks more often now

All intermixed with ranches anywhere there was flat land

As we approached Lytton, where the Thompson and Frazer rivers meet up, we saw many signs of the fires that destroyed the town in 2021:

The meeting of the rivers

These gravel lots used to be town buildings

Reconstruction is happening, but slowly

 There is always road construction going on. We couldn't help thinking about what it must have been like pushing roads and railways through this incredible terrain. It's a pretty cushy drive now compared to the early days:

A new bridge going in here, with a Bailey bypass for now

Scree is continually coming down

They were scooping out a ditch to keep the scree from overrunning the road

After the amazing drive today we're back in Ashcroft at a campground right in town. We enjoyed our visit the day before, and it's a nice campground.

Day 2 route: