Houston, B.C.

We drove about 245 miles today from Stewart to Houston, B.C. (This Houston is nothing like the Houston we know to avoid in Texas!) It was a beautiful day, with sunshine, smooth roads, light traffic and pretty scenery. We’ve become somewhat blasé to pretty mountains, having seen The Great One and several other fairly magnificent ones. But we still appreciate nice countryside. We saw a small black bear this morning – it looked like a cub, but we didn’t see a sow anywhere nearby. And we saw cows and horses, and fields of newly-baled hay, for a change of scene.

The first stop of the day was to get pictures of Bear Glacier, about 25 miles east of Stewart.

It’s hard to appreciate the scale of this glacier. It’s across the Bear River from where we were standing. It’s not anywhere near as large as Salmon Glacier, but it’s still big. And it’s close to the highway. Here’s a close-up of the bottom.

That’s a lot of ice! The river looks pretty calm here, but downstream where we drove beside it there was a lot of white water.

Back on the road, before long we had come to the end of the Cassiar Highway 37 and turned east onto the Yellowhead Highway 16. We stopped at Hazelton where we ate our lunch in the Visitor Center parking lot. There were 3 statues honoring minors, packers and loggers.

Don wondered, Why does he have his foot on a pitch fork? Maybe he used it to sift large gold nuggets out of the rocks. Click on the pictures of the plaques for a better view.

There was a small farmers’ market in the parking lot.

I bought some delicious tomatoes at this stand for $2 a pound (they were $6 in Fairbanks, where we did NOT buy any).

We found a small RV park on the highway, Siverthorne RV Park, a little mom & pop place just west of Houston, with fairly level parking on grass. $24 for full hookups, including $2 HST – lots of Canadians are unhappy about this new tax. Compared to what we’ve paid recently, it seemed reasonable and a lot better than an unlevel turnout on a busy highway.

We enjoyed happy hour in the shade since the sun was warming us up!

As usual, Shadow loved the grass, and he got spoiled with some peanuts coming his way. He even got a belly rub or two under Larry and Marilyn’s feet.

All in all, it was a very pleasant day. We’ll head for Prince George tomorrow.