Day 18 - Liard Springs, British Columbia
Saturday 7/8/2006
We slept well. The catalytic heater is keeping us nice and warm when we leave it at the lowest setting. Only slight drawback is that it gets a bit humid in the trailer. Once I was up, the fire alarm went off a few times in the trailer, presumably because it was so humid inside and that he walked just underneath the sensor a few times, stirring the air. As soon as Karl was up he started to play with his cars inside the trailer. It was nice and warm inside the trailer, but just 60F (15C) and humid outside. But the rain had at least stopped. Perhaps we are going to see a bit of clearing of the clouds?
We ate breakfast and headed out for Muncho Lake. We had a mix of rain and sunshine on the way there. Erik really wanted to try out his fish gear and we'd heard from the attendant at the provincial park that fishing was supposed to be nice in the further end of the lake. Isabella drove the truck. We stopped at J&K to buy a fishing license. Unfortunately, the have stopped selling them due to some "problems" with the government. And so has everyone else, so there are none to be had north of Fort Nelson. Erik was disappointed. We thought about taking a hike, but the weather was not exactly nice. So, instead, we drove to the south end of Muncho Lake and stopped for a brief moment.
Erik, Isabella and Karl at the shores of Muncho Lake (with overcast)
The views were not great at all so we started to head back home. We decided we wanted to visit Smith River Falls, which is about 30km (14 mi) north of the provincial park.
A view from the last span bridge along the Alaskan Highway in British Columbia
A flower by the side of the road where we stopped to look at the span bridge
We found the instructions for how to find the Smith River falls to be a bit nebulous. I was working on the diary and was not paying too much attention to signs, while Isabella was driving. And she did not pay much attention either. We ended up making a U-turn since I suspected we had gone too far north of Liard Hot Springs. When the sign beside the road appeared, we took the turn and went off-roading. We knew it was going to be off-roading, but we were not quite sure what was ahead of us. We saw some more signs suggesting this was going to be a bad road, but hey, we've got a truck, so that should not be a problem.
This looks like the right place. Lets turn here!
Ha! Does not discourage us (fools)...
A little concerning, but what the heck..
In 4x4 we kept going and going.. towards the wrong place..
This place was supposed to be about 1 1/2 mile in from the Alaskan Highway, but we kept going and going, until a pickup truck blocked the one lane road. I walked out and talked with the driver, who was doing some logging (not blogging). I mentioned that we were heading to the Smith River Falls. The guy looked like a big question mark and then told me that this road was actually leading to a defunct campground, about 50 km (35 mi) into the wilderness.. Ok, so it turns out that we've been going on the wrong road, in the middle of nowhere. Thankfully we ran into this guy on the road! Next problem: turn around a long bed extended cab pickup on a narrow logging road. I took over the truck and turned it around. Isabella then continued on her 4x4 trekking back to the main Alaskan Highway. When we got back out, we continued south for a short while and tried the next road. Wrong again. It took is to a gravel pit in the woods. Some more south and then bingo! This was a mud road where you have to gun it a bit to not get stuck. Isabella did well and she had a good time driving. We all shouted and made noises as we hiked the trail to the fall, to reduce the risk of being surprised by a bear.
After hiking a trail at the end of the dirt road we finally got to see the quite large fall (we're about 100ft above the water here)
Lots of steep stair to climb
We then returned back to the campground. While I was standing next to our truck, another camper came by and looked for directions to the hot pools. After I gave the man directions, he mentioned that there was a black bear on site #14. We are now on site #24. I was not too inclined to walk over and check... The kids made a quick dash for the hot pools. When they got back to the campground the boys wanted to make a fire. The played with it for a while and then roasted marshmallows.
Marshmallows over the fire when we got back home to the campsite at Liard Hot Springs