The only thing I knew about Williams Lake before we arrived here was they had a huge forest fire last year. But now I would consider it a really great place to base yourself and explore the area. The city itself has the best visitors centre I have been to. Beautiful building, nice museum, cozy chairs to sit and access their free wifi, a little coffee shop inside and the staff are super knowledgable and helpful in terms of things to do in Williams Lake and beyond. I know I sound like I am writing a Trip Advisor review (which I did and gave it 5 stars) but I have really found on this trip that when the visitors centre staff are passionate about their town and the things to do, you become more interested in actually doing them….I wonder if anyone has ever done a study on this….
Anyway in Williams Lake, we checked out their hiking trails on Scout Island (there seems to be a theme in these towns that if you have an "island" accessible by land, you put hiking trails on it). We also went to their farmer’s market and checked out their mountain bike trails on Fox Mountain.
From Williams Lake you can head to Bella Coola along highway 20 where the “Cariboo” area turns into the “Chilcoutin” area (I still don’t really know what these areas entail but it is what the guidebooks are organized by). We did a little day trip out to Farewell Canyon (on recommendation from the visitors centre) and it was really beautiful. Crazy valleys and the Fraser River storming by. The drive to Bella Coola on the coast would have been 5-6 hours in, maybe spend a night or two and then drive 5-6 hours back out the same highway so we didn’t go. But we may consider it when we head back south from Yukon/Alaska as there is a ferry that goes from Bella Coola to Port Hardy (on Vancouver Island). We will keep you posted.
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| The drive to farewell canyon |
Another really cool place to visit (and again highly recommended by the Williams Lake visitors centre staff) was Barkerville. Heard of it? We hadn’t either. It was about about an 80 km drive off the main highway that goes from Williams Lake to Prince George. There is not a lot going on down this highway besides the town of Wells that likely supplies all the staff who work at Barkerville. So what is Barkerville? It is a historic site depicting life in 1862 at the height of the gold rush in the area. There are over 100 historic buildings, actors dressed up in period clothing and re-enacting interactions they would have had at the time, demonstrations of panning for gold and the working of the water wheel, Chinatown and Chinese lessons and more that I just can’t even remember. We got there and were given the schedule and there was literally something every hour you could attend. Or you could just walk around and go tour the buildings or visit the shops (or the bakeries). It was a really fun day. They also had a variety theatre that night too so we blew our entertainment budget for the month and went to that as well.
And the mosquitoes? They definitely still terrorized us throughout the Williams Lake area especially at night. We stayed at some recreation sites (those free camp sites I talked about in the last post) near Williams Lake and although Mike had a fire going to try and smoke them out, I pretty much spent the evening in the van hiding. Unfortunately one night we left the back door window open so the mosquitoes joined us in the van and feasted on everyone. Ugh. Definitely haven’t made that mistake again…
Passion is contagious 💖
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