WILLIAMS LAKE, HORSEFLY AND LIKELY, BC

One more thing about the Biathlon shooting that we did in Whistler…Don was very proud of himself for hitting all five targets first time around. Then when I hit all five as well, it took a bit of the wind out of his sails.  Which I seem to do periodically.

The gal that was there directing us said she was quite surprised that he hit all five of his shots. She seemed really surprised when I hit all of mine.  We suspect she is trained to tell folks how great they did no matter how they shoot.  


Anyway, Don went on to pay for five more shots so he could shoot at the golf ball sized targets.  As a result, Don is no longer thinking of taking up the Biathlon as an Olympic sport.

OK, just so you know, we made it…

…down the steep grade and through the 45 degree turn under the railroad overpass.

I did a bit of praying as we approached and we made it through…but by just seconds!  Don said he wasn’t worried.  Yeah, right!

This is a totally blind turn on the edge of the canyon and coming our way…only a matter of seconds away from the ‘intersection’…was a Class C motorhome. If it had taken us a few more seconds for us to arrive there, or if the other rig had been driving a little bit faster, we both would have reached the underpass at the same time. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened.

You should have heard Don’s sigh of relief when we made it through in one piece!! And he said he said he wasn’t concerned!!!

This was our last look at the Fraser River at least for now. We will pick it up again further up the road.

One of the irritations I face here in Canada is their power lines. They are everywhere, big and black and always hanging where I want to photograph.

A bit further on there is a plateau along the river canyon where they grow crops and right now it is haying time.

Finally we exit the exciting (???) though beautiful, Highway 99 and turned north on Highway 97, a much more RV-friendly route.

On this road we get to drive the motorhome 100 mph…oh, I guess that’s kilometers per hours…or about 62 mph. Well, it was exciting there for a minute…

We found a RV park in Williams Lake and then took a drive up to a tiny town called, Horsefly. There wasn't much at Horsefly but when you find a town with a name like that, well you just have to go look.  We had a late breakfast at the town’s only café. It had all of three things on the breakfast menu which made choosing what to eat pretty easy.

The Horsefly River runs through the area and we crossed over another of the one-lane wooden bridge.

The information we had said there was a museum in Horsefly. That may have been a bit of an exaggeration.  However, the tiny building did have a picture of the Horsefly Hotel back in the days when Horsefly was a boom town.

An hour or two up a back road was the equally tiny town of Likely. The road to Likely was a beautiful drive.
Again it was a narrow, one-lane dirt road.

We found this grouse which was just standing in the middle of the road and he didn't move.  We had to drive around him.

With mountains and forests in the background and wildflowers in the foreground, we were thoroughly enjoying this drive.

Add to that a river view…and a very steep road…well, it certainly wasn’t boring, either.

This is really a picture-postcard sort of drive and exactly the kind of thing we enjoy stumbling on.

It had been raining on and off for the last 24 hours or so and it made the potholes in the road easier to see.  We splashed in and out of a lot of them.

We saw only one waterfall on this drive and it was almost hidden behind greenery.

The little town of Likely sits on the end of Quesnel Lake and so is great for camping and fishing for locals.

Except for the cabins on the river and a very small store, this was about as much of Likely as we were likely to see!

Next we heard there was a ghost town nearby, called Quesnel Forks.

The sun broke through for a little while, but there were still a few raindrops on the windshield. We looked past them and at another VERY steep road.

Quesnel Forks is a ghost town that was formerly a boomtown in the 1800’s. It sits at the bottom of a mountain next to the river. It is a beautiful setting. During the 1880's many towns that were boom towns quickly became ghost towns when gold became much harder to come by that folks thought.

Currently, the Quesnel Forks Cemetery Association is keeping up the site and doing some restoration of the several buildings that are still there. We were surprised to see that there are actually a number of recent burials in the cemetery since no one lives there any longer.

 

The river in this location is quite wide and fast moving. You can see a large timber on it’s way down the river.

This little cabin and the rest of the town site apparently was part of a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Cariboo Gold Rush in 2009. (The ‘Cariboo’ is the designation of this area of British Columbia.)

I suspect this old truck made it down the mountain and gave up the ghost rather than attempt the drive back up to the top.

There were very few items in any of the buildings, but for some reason there was this antique bath tub in one of them. I guess one never knows who will stop by needing a bath…

A bench welcomed visitors to sit and relax by the river for a while.

Heading back to the top of the mountain, we stopped to take in the view at an inviting overlook.

This was our first sign of turning leaves and fall colors.

But summer is not gone yet and we see a lot of Fireweed still blooming in the area.

On the way back to the RV park, we came upon a whole herd of cattle on the road. There is a lot of open range around here. Mom was busy nursing this calf as we drove past. As you can see, she didn’t bat an eye.

Just before the cattle, we saw a moose by the road, however, he quickly headed back into the bushes and I couldn’t get a picture.  Maybe next time.

I can’t get over all the wildflowers that are blooming everywhere. They are really beautiful.

Tomorrow we head north to Quesnel and then driving the car to Barkerville, a very special old boom town.  I will post again in a couple days.

By the way, we really enjoy hearing your comments on the blog, so keep your input coming.