Day 51 -- Windy roads, desert and rain forest

Travel   From: Marble Canyon PP, Cache Creek, BC area   To: Alice Lake PP, just south of Whistler ski resort, BC   Distance: 151 mi (243 km)   Travel time w/brks: 6 hr 10   Distance since start: 10,513 mi (16,905 km)

Thursday 8/10/2006

We ate breakfast in the trailer and then hooked up to leave. It turned out to be easier than I had thought to get the trailer out. We headed south towards Lilloet. We had heard that the road in that direction and, especially, towards Whistler was bad. The ride was interesting. Lots of twisty turns and somewhat narrow roads, but not really that hard to drive.

Suddenly we were in a desert like climate

A river that flows towards Lilloet

This just shows how unusual the rain is: they are watering fields under the clouds

I thought it was rather odd that we'd find a desert up here. Perhaps my idea of a desert is too tied to a warm place. In this place the mountains looked more or less like in Utah or Idaho, except we were much further up north. When we reached Lilloet we bought fuel. We found an Esso station in the middle of town, although we had to make a right after the bridge over the river and head up into town. It was a bit tight, but it worked.

Buying diesel in Lilloet, BC

After leaving Lilloet we ran into more steep roads and we left the desert climate for your typical wet forest.

Cayoosh Creek, just south of Lilloet, BC

Rushing down the steep and windy logging roads

After a while we stopped for lunch at one end of Duffy Lake, BC, about 70 miles or so from Whistler. A lot of logs had piled up in one end of the lake, where we parked. It was not hard to imagine that this place would look really nice if it was not for the clouds.

Taking a lunch break by Duffy Lake, BC, about 70 miles north of Whistler (ski resort)

We continued south after lunch. We drove through an Indian reservation where a sign suggested that it was illegal to host a future winter olympics on stolen land. We passed through Whistler, the big ski resort, but found no obvious spot to stop with our large combination length. We continued south. Someone I know in Vancouver, through PubSub, had recommended we stay at Alice Lake Provincial Park. This is about 25 miles south of Whistler. We did not know what to expect. We did not have a reservation either. But we managed to get the last site (of 108+) for one night. It turns out to be a real cool place in the middle of a rain forest. The sites were large. They also did recycle. Like good citizens we had carried all our recycle with us since before we entered Alaska. Karl basically filled up the campground's recycle container near our campsite.

Our huge collection of recycle we've collected for the past three weeks or so, with nowhere to dispose of it
Finally we run into a place where they accept it!!

Erik relaxes in our new campsite at Alice Lake PP, BC

Karl gets his cars out

There is plenty of difficult terrain here..

We quickly realized that we wanted to stay here a bit longer. My original plan was to stay one night near Whistler and then head down for two nights near Vancouver. After just walking around here, and also talking to some couples from Vancouver, we concluded it would be a better idea to extend our stay here and avoid any campgrounds close to Vancouver. We are close enough to Vancouver that we can make a daytrip down there from up here. I was able to get two more nights, but we had to move to another site following this night.

Campground   Name: Alice Lake PP, BC   Our hookups: None   WiFi: No   GSM service: Yes   TV Channels: Don't know   Cost: $22 CND/night   Reservation mode: Drop in

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All Pictures (c) 2006 Hamnqvist, Background features the Yukon Sky.