Prince George
Leaving Port Edward, we headed east, four and a half hours to Houston, where we stayed one night at the Shady Rest RV Park. It was a lovely, tidy place to stay for a night, and sticking with our water theme, the on-site laundromat was closed due to the drought they were experiencing. The next morning we got up and continued our drive to Prince George.
We made a stop along the way at Fraser Lake, because it’s called Fraser Lake! We learned that Fraser Lake calls itself the “White Swan Capital of the World”.In the 1930s Trumpeter Swans were considered a vanishing species, but a program was instituted to protect them. Fraser Lake and the adjacent Francois Lake are in the eastern portion of their wintering area. In the late fall, over a thousand trumpeter swans can be seen on Fraser Lake.
We also stopped in at the Fraser Lake Visitor’s Center (who unfortunately didn’t sell any stickers), but they did have a nice small museum we had to check out. I was quite taken with a binder that was there with a loom. In the binder were various weaving patterns that had been carefully documented.
After the break in Fraser Lake, we continued on our way to the Hartway RV Park outside of Prince George. The woman running the campground, Cindy, gave us one of her favourite sites at the back of the campground, which allowed us to run our Starlink through the trees and against the fence line which gave our dish a bit of line of sight to the satellites.
I had to do a work trip to Seattle for a couple of days, but was still able to see a few things in our time remaining after I returned. We went to the Central BC Railway and Forestry Museum, which is enormous. It even has a mini-train that I was, perhaps, overly excited about.
There were so many trains to look at on the museum grounds. I was fascinated by the wedge plow, that is used to clear snow off of the tracks.
The also had a coach, the Nechako Coach, which was built in 1913 by the Pullman Company as a tourist sleeping car for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. After a fire, it was converted and used as a business car until the early 1980’s. In 1984 it was converted into a “entertainment executive car” for Expo 86 in Vancouver, and hosted many notable people, including Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
They also have a turntable and a beehive burner.
I learned that beehive burners were used by sawmills and planer mills to dispose of the “unusable” portions of trees such as bark and sawdust. The “waste” was transported to the burner via conveyor, where it would go through the opening high up on the side and would be dropped in over the middle of the burn area.
Another day we did a walk through the Cottonwood Island Nature Park. It was quite nice, and if you looked to see worn paths off of the main trail, and looked up, those paths were leading to trees with small sculptures carved into the face of them.
On the last night in Prince George we went to the British Columbia Northern Exhibition (BCNE). All the carnival rides, deep fried Mars bars, 4H club and Super Dog shows that you could imagine were there.
It was quite a sprawling event that took over several buildings, and in our wanderings we ended up at the quilting display, where a keen volunteer handed us a slip of paper and a pencil and urged us to cast a vote in the “audience favourite” category. I have to say there were many impressive quilts on display.
While we did not stay to see Honeymoon Suite play that night, it was fun to just wander around and see all there was to see.
The city of Prince George itself is going through some rough times. The downtown core is quite grim, with a lot of shuttered businesses and unhoused people filling the streets. There were a few new businesses trying to make a go of it, but it was clear that they were struggling to make it work given their surroundings. But there were many great trails to walk around the city.
A couple of places we visited were: Ritual Coffee, The Open Door Cafe (for coffee), and Queen of Harts (for our Saturday morning greasy breakfast). After filling ourselves up at the Queen of Harts, our next stop was Mount Robson Park, near Valemount.