Northern Meandering

Every one or two months, Sonia and I - or myself alone – head down south to Kelowna.

For those not familiar with British Columbia geography, Kelowna is a city located on Okanagan Lake. The lake itself is over 100 miles long, running roughly north and south towards the southern part of B.C. It is dotted with towns, large and small. At the top of the lake is Vernon, then Oyama (named in honour of a Japanese admiral), Lakeside and Kelowna. To the south lie Westbank, Summerland, and Penticton. I have omitted a few. This is a desert made into an orchard by irrigation, and more recently into vineyards for wine making. The wines, especially the ice wine have made the Okanagan Valley famous.

Back in the fifties, when I first went to Kelowna, it was a sleepy little railway and agricultural town. No more. The population has boomed, with recreation year round from boating and swimming in the summer to skiing in the winter. As orchards gave way to wineries, all of the Okanagan towns started to attract retired types from all over Canada. Gated communities now dot the landscape as well as an ever-increasing number of high rise towers. Many have relocated from Vancouver, driving house prices up and up to that equal of Vancouver.

Quite a change from Prince George, where we now call home.

There are two main routes to travel and we tend to vary them. One way is south along the Caribou Trail (the old gold rush trail) which follows the Fraser River. For us, that means heading south to Quesnel, Williams Lake, 100 Mile House and finally Cashe Creek. A turn east takes you into Kamloops.

Heading east from Prince George, one goes for miles and miles with nothing but treed hills and mountains as far as the eye can see. Eventually, you get to McBride where one joins the Yellowhead Highway and follows it south along the Thompson River to Valemont, Clearwater and other small communities into Kamloops. The Fraser and Thompson join at Kamloops then heading south to Vancouver.

This trip, we headed east, enjoying cruise control as the road meandered with slow sleepy turns across the northern forests. No towns along this route, no gas stations or much of anything but trees. You travel for miles until reaching McBride, where the valley broadens out for farming and ranching. A short distance further east and you catch the Thompson and turn south. Unlike the muddy brown Fraser, the Thompson is a wonderful blue-green and it meanders along green valleys surrounded first by trees, then as you go further south, by desert, parched and dry yellow hills and sandstone. By the time you reach Kamloops, you are in ranching and rattlesnake country.

Kamloops has one favourite stop for us. At a Second Glance bookstore is located downtown but with easy parking. Not too large, it is crowded with mostly pocketbooks but it does have a fair selection of hardcovers at “reasonable” prices – not many bargains, but a good place to complete any writer in softcover. They have already provided me with all the Travis McGee books and now, the titles I needed for Jane Haddam. Anyone wanting a complete collection of Robert B. Parker in softcover could probably find all here, stashed away in boxes in the back.

Having left early – around 7:30 AM – we were in Kamloops by 2:00 PM so had lots of time to browse and still head along the way to Kelowna. Again there are choices. We selected the “scenic” route east almost to Salmon Arm on the Sushwap Lakes and then south over the hills to Vernon via Falkland. Falkland’s one (and perhaps only claim to fame is that Buddy Rich (“Come Along and Be My Party Doll”), the early rocker, settled here on a ranch after his brief fame. He died a year or so ago)

Vernon is at the northern tip of both Okanagan Lake and Kalamalka Lake. The two lakes are seperated by a ridge of hills and the townsite. The highway south takes you above Kalamalka – the “lake of many colours”. It is always beautiful, going from deep green to deep blue and all shades in-between. Oyama lies at its southern tip, and at the northern head of yet another lake. You soon get caught up in the new commercialization. Endless strip malls, car dealers and big box stores start here and continue all the way through Kelowna. While Kelowna is blessed by geography in the main, the negative is that all through traffic – and most commuter traffic as well - must go via the highway and bridge. Traffic snarls of two hours or more are not unusual. This after 800+ kilometers of driving

Having been a long-term visitor to Kelowna, I always stay at the same motel. While it has changed hands the staff have largely remained – for the day staff. Evenings are a different matter, and we arrived in the evening. Oh well, not all can go well. It seems that to rent a room following the new rules, one must either pay by credit card or, if paying by cash have sufficient room on your credit card for the full “deposit” of around $300. My credit cards rarely have that much free room unless I plan ahead. So we ended up not staying at our normal motel the first night, a problem rectified by the day staff the next morning. My goodness! It seems that one cannot travel anymore at all. Either that or you are restricted to the really skuzzy motels that neither demand a deposit nor clean up the rooms too often. The next trip, my funds go on my card. Cash, it seems, is dead.

All’s well that ends well. We moved the next morning and Sonia had her chance to swim in the pool during the afternoon.

And I have my medical appointments…

Next morning, it was another medical and then on the road again, this time a new route. We went west, up the Okanagan Connector to Merritt. Merritt is the home of the annual Mountain Music Festival, the downtown complete with paved stars for C&W performers who have appeared at the event. Then, instead of turning north to Logan Lake, we went west on Highway 8 to Spense’s Bridge and the Trans Canada Highway.

Highway 8 is a delight. It follows the Nicola River and is the perfect road for a sports car. I wish I was back in my little MGB, but the Caravan would do. So we twisted round corners, up high over the river then dropping down, around a few bends and more corners, and started all over again climbing the side of the hills. Sonia hung on and kept quiet. I was having great fun! There is not much on the road and scenery limited to a few lush and small valleys amongst the desert hilltops. Rock falls of sandstone and, closer to Spense’s Bridge, hoodoos of strange and out-of-this- world appearance. After an hour or so of total enjoyment (for me, the driver) we came into Spense’s Bridge by the railway, a strange assortment of old houses and buildings that once may have had a purpose.

Now north, on the Trans Canada to Ashcroft and Cashe Creek. Bleak country, round hills and jagged rock outcroppings. Hot, dry and looking like a western movie. Behind some of those hills is a giant landfill for Vancouver garbage.

We stopped in Cashe Creek for an ice cream. I needed a pick-me-up after the drive and we knew we simply had to get home that night. Ahead lay the Caribou Trail, the way to the Barkerville Gold Rush of 1858.

The stagecoach started off at Chase, a town just a few miles up the way. “Historic”, they call this place. I suppose it is but the antique stores were more junque. Billboards show the stages leaving and arriving – we simply passed through, knowing our next stop would be in one hundred miles, at One Hundred Mile House. Along the way, Eighty Mile, Ninety Mile – they seemed to run out of good names when the Rush was on. Still, the countryside was wonderful, treed pastures and old log cabins and barns. The Fraser just off to the left.

The Caribou is a very pretty area. Unlike the never-ending evergreens of Prince George, trees are mixed with small pastures and grazing horses. Occasionally, a small lake comes along, a creek or river.

Williams Lake is a nice town, with a charming downtown that curves along the top of the lake. Next stop, Quennel. It is the gateway to Barkerville and the gold rush of 1858. Barkerville and the charming stage stop, Cottonwood, lie to the east a few miles. While Quennel has a nice riverfront and parkland, the town is studded with pulp mills within the town limits.

The further north you go, the broader the valley, the more distant the hills. By the time you get close to Prince George, you are in flat farmlands, bordered by hills to be sure. You pass the “international” airport on the way in, then over the Fraser to the standard stretch of motels, strip malls and shopping centres. Of all the towns, Prince George is the biggest in the north, about 75,000. It has major depots for industrial supplies, logging, mining and farming equipment. And more pulp mills, this time a short distance out of town to the north.

Prince George is in the middle of nowhere. To the south, Vancouver is a ten to twelve hour drive. East is Edmonton, a bit closer; southeast is Calgary, almost the same distance. Westward is the Pacific and Prince Rupert – a longer trip. The last attempt we made was stopped due to a mudslide. To the north, Dawson Creek and Fort St. James and Fort Nelson. Nothing is close by.

Yet historically, the northern part of British Columbia was the first to have European visitors. Prince George was founded by Simon Fraser in 1780 or so after Alexander McKenzie had passed by a few years before. Then called “Fort George”, after George III, it slumbered as a fur trading post until the 1920s. It was part of New Caledonia, now northern British Columbia with the headquarters of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Fort St. James. We have been to Fort St. James, past Vanderhoff to the west and on the way to Prince Rupert. It is now a small village on the shores of Stewart Lake.

Paddlewheelers used to ply the waters of the Fraser from Quennel north past Fort George to the headwaters. With the land rush of the early century, South Fort George was south of the old Hudson’s Bay trading post, Central Fort George to the northwest. Haggling over where the railway station should go led to the purchase of the Native Reserve by the railway and the establishment of Prince George between the two. The arrival of the railway during World War One made the towns grow and eventually merge. (One result is a totally crazy pattern of streets in the older parts of town).

South Fort George, on the river, was home to bars and brothels; Central Fort George the establishment types. The Natives on the Reserve complained of drunks walking home to Central from South, one reason why they were happy to sell out.