Storyline: Westward Ho!
Sat, Jul 8
Despite the smoke and red sun, when visible, we were still in the lull before the storm that was developing around us. Wildfires. Today we are heading towards Prince George. From Kitwanga this is the only way towards home. We’ll decide on the next leg when at Prince George. As discussed in previous posts going back north towards Dawson Creek was no longer an option due to wildfires near Tumbler Ridge. We could either cross the mountains at Jasper or continue south towards the Okanagan Valley.
When we had cellular service, we looked into a few wildfire maps. Google maps has layers with the air quality and the wildfires. It is about a day delayed, but gives us a pretty good picture. Or should I say a pretty bad picture. A big dark (the worst smoke) blob covers Canada. East, west, centre.
The smoke is following us on Trans-Canada Hwy 16, known also as the Yellowhead Hwy. Twists and turns, up and downs. And smoke. Wildfires very close.
We stop at Smithers to refill Doranya and ourselves. It is Saturday and there is also a farmers market. We walked though it. A small market. One booth grabbed out attention. Homegrown mushrooms, but not just the regulars. We chatted with Marie-Eve and her partner Alexis. They had a variety of different colours of oyster mushrooms, mushroom salts, jerky and tinctures. We bought all 3 colours of oyster mushrooms and a package of mushroom salt.
Dropped what would be dinner into the van and walked to Tim Horton’s for our refill. Back on the highway. Not only did the smoke not dissipate, but it became thicker and thicker.
Near Burns Lake the fires were just a hill away from the road. We watched helicopters scooping water from the lake and taking off towards the fires. “In a couple of hours, they’ll close this highway”, Alex says. Just keep driving.
We reached Vanderhoof in the late afternoon and stopped at the visitors centre / museum to stretch our legs. The closest RV park before Prince George was the West Lake Campground.
Yes, they had sites. And so, we headed there. It is about 10km south of hwy 16. After a long drive we park.
Alex quickly griddles the mushrooms with a bison sausage we had in the fridge and after dinner we crashed.
Our site was close to the road that leads to a provincial park and some private properties. On Saturday night the road was noisy. All night long.
Stuart sends me a link from the news. Evacuation orders for some just south of Smithers, BC. Power Creek blaze some 3 km south of town today. That’s how close we were to it!
Sun, Jul 9
We woke up to even heavier smoke. Breakfast, coffee/tea and off we go. We are both choking from the smoke. Alex began coughing. Looking into the smoke map we decided to drive south towards the Okanagan Valley.
On Hwy BC-97 known also as the Cariboo Hwy. It was the only clear spot at that time. Little did we know that this was very temporarily. After all, the winds change all the time. We stop at Quesnel for lunch. Air is bad. I have jotted a few campgrounds’ phone numbers on a piece of paper. We sat on a terrace outside of the diner. Alex starts calling. The first two have no spots. The one in Clinton has. We reserve it. The night is secured. We continue south on BC-97.
At a certain point in time our nav system takes us through some weird small roads. We are now on what seems to be Mountain House Rd. Burned trees around us. But from previous years. There is some traffic too. We are not completely alone, which gives us the feeling that we are not lost on logging roads. Perhaps there was an accident on the major highway.
Or perhaps Apple maps thought this was the shorter route. It is not the first time we had to check and steer the nav to the right direction. I am checking with my phone’s nav. Not a lot of signal, but eventually I find Likely Rd and we turn towards Cariboo hwy which we rejoined near 150 Mile House.
Blue skies. For now! Still because of lack of service and therefore not following local news we are under the illusion that we can escape the worst of the smoke. We’d spend a few days around the Okanagan wineries and perhaps cross the mountains on the most southern roads near Osoyoos, just north of the U.S. border.
Transcribing all this two months later, I can’t believe all the fires we barely dodged. Smithers, Burns Lake, Quesnel, Kamloops, West Kelowna (we still have to reach there), Osoyoos…there was no safe place in that part of Canada. Nova Scotia, Quebec, Northern Ontario… And later on, NWT… Canada was burning at a high rate. And posting this a couple of months later, even later Peachland (we’d spend a few nights there) burned too.
But for now, on Sunday July 9th, we parked at Clinton Pines RV and Campground. A popular place for the locals because of the fish and chip shop. It opens at around 4pm. We’d have dinner from there. If not enough clientele, as we’d find out the following day, it would open by demand. They had a good variety. All deep fried from frozen of course.
I wasn’t happy with the spot she gave us given the fact that the campground was half full. But people began arriving towards the end of the day and it filled up. Still a small campground by the road. Since the air seemed OK and Alex clicked a 37.8° C fever, we decided to stay a second night. A virus perhaps? It definitely wasn’t Covid. But where in the world would we get a virus? We haven’t been in close contact with anybody since we left Haines Junction.
Much later, back home, we’d learn that the smoke from the wildfires had affected Alex’s lungs. And perhaps mine too, since I began coughing just after Alex, and I’d have one time 37.6° C fever too in the next day or so. But being on anticoagulants Alex was more affected than me. Soon his condition would make us realise that there was no safe place and we had to bite the bullet and quickly cross this big blob of heavily polluted air before we were to reach home.
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