WILLIAMS LAKE TO QUESNEL ON OUR ROAD TRIP TO ALASKA

Williams Lake

Woke to a temp of 33 degrees F. at the Williams Lake visitor center. I must admit, taking a shower and washing my hair when the outside temp is 33 degrees F. is not very appealing. We very rarely ever run the heat at night so it takes a few minutes to get the motor home warm (or at least not freezing).  Yes, we cranked up the heat and ran the hot water heater, but still,  getting the air temp to 63 and slowly climbing takes the fun out of hopping into the shower. We always take navy showers to conserve water but they leave you wet and cold while your scrubbing yourself. OK, that’s enough whine.  We managed to get the job done without using too much of our propane.
There’s a free dump site in the Williams Lake Stampede Park right off 97 and 20, about a mile or two from the visitors center. There are two dump stations and you can also get potable water there.

Soda Creek Village–
We had hoped to go to Xatsull (a First Nation Heritage Village we will try to visit on another trip) but since we didn’t have good directions to get there or an address to feed into the GPS. The GPS must have looked down from the sky and chose a likely path for us. Uh, oh! As soon as we made the turn, as instructed by the GPS, we knew it was wrong. Apparently, the GPS did not realize there were a few ranches and many miles between the route they sent us on and the correct route. This has happened before so we knew this was a possibility but we decided to follow the road anyway to see where it would lead us. Some Lazy Daze motor homes are rated for treking so why not go for it. It turned out to be an eleven mile gravel road that ran through beautiful ranch country mostly along the Soda Creek. What a serendipitous adventure. Our motor home is small enough to turn around in most places but we’re glad we continued. We travelled very slowly and thoroughly enjoyed all that we saw. Even met one of the Ranchers and chatted awhile. He was driving his ATV to move some bulls along the gravel road to the next pasture and we had a chance to watch his two Border Collies do their work. Those two dogs hurried the huge bulls along and guided them into the pasture. All the rancher had to do for this part of the day was to fasten the gate so the bulls didn’t wander onto the road. He said he couldn’t do this work without these smart dogs, and all this for a few bowls of dog food and a pat on the head.

Quesnel–
By late afternoon the temp. outside was in the mid-sixties and it was sunny all day. The town of Quesnel has a pleasant museum next to the visitor center. The visitor center has free Wi-Fi. The museum was recommended by Mike and Teri Church in their book “Pacific Northwest Camping Destinations’. We poked around in the museum for quite a little while then walked to the nearby cemetery. The oldest date we saw on a tombstone was in the 1800’s for birthdates and all had died in the 1900’s. So it was not a very old cemetery. Behind the cemetery are two covered ice skating rinks where much hockey is played in the winter. Today the rinks are being used for a car and a home show. Too bad, would have enjoyed watching some hockey.

Gas Prices
Gas prices seem to be going up the further north we go. In Soda Creek gas was $5.20/gal. reg. We will get gas in Quesnel in the AM. Don’t know the going rate for gas in Quesnel but we will get the bad news in the morning. We’re told it is wise to travel on the top half of the gas tank as sometimes the stations can be wide spread.

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LAST WEEK OF HIKING & BOONDOCKING AT SENATOR WASH

Wednesday  3/7/12

Today we just hiked around the reservoir following the road dirt road.  We hiked along with a couple of our neighbors from British Columbia and their 6 mo. old dog, “Dora the Explorer”.  Warm with a light breeze, lovely environment and good company…life is good.

A picture of cute Dora.

Thursday 3/8/12

Ah, it’s Thursday and off we go on the “Thursday Guided Hike”.  It was nice.  A small group for this the last hike of the snowbird season for 2011/2012.  This time we hiked to the Imperial Dam, a hike of about 5 miles.  We passed an area that had been heavily mined by independent gold miners.  Incredible how they dug down into rock that is so hard.  This was some determined bunch.  Some of the abandoned mines were so deep we could not see the bottom and some went off to the side underground presumable to follow a vein of gold.  Of course, if you are going to work a mine in the desert year round, you are better off way underground in the heat of the summer sun.

This hike had about a dozen hikers.

Below is an example of some of the rock the gold miners were dealing with.

Below are examples of a few of the abandoned gold mines.

Below – some examples of the Senator Wash area flora.

Below: picnic area at Imperial Dam

Imperial Dam

Friday & Saturday 3/9 & 3/10/12

We are still boondocking down by the reservoir at Senator Wash on the South shore but we woke up in the morning to find they had lowered the reservoir for crop irrigation.  We lost our water side view!  The campers next door said our property value dropped overnight!  Nothing left to do but to slog across the exposed muddy reservoir bottom and hike around the reservoir following the shore line.  Hiking the shore line brings you over to the North side of the reservoir which is lovely and isolated as there is usually only a rough dirt road leading to that side.  The potable fresh water, dump sites, a paved road and other services are all on the South side of the reservoir making the South side of the reservoir the default area for boondocking near the water.  Well, this time, we found a number of RVers had made their way to the North side.  They traveled over the rough, dirt road, even with large RVs and found great camping sites near the water!  Upon further observation of these intrepid campers, we realized that they were mostly  young, working folk and were only here for a long weekend.  Ah youth, no problem, find a place off by yourself, have fun, make all the noise you want playing your music because there is hardly anyone around and your out of there in a few days.  So it is quite doable, just the weekends might be a little noisy.

Why walk all the way around on the dirt road?  Just walk to the other side through the mud (see below).

Evidence that there are raccoon here, even though we have never seen them.

Below is a picture of a large, secluded campsite right at the water on the North side of Senator Wash.  A group of young men in multiple campers were camped here for a long weekend and it looked like they brought just about every toy known to man.  They said they have been coming here for years.

Sunday & Monday 3/11 & 3/12/12

Sunday and Monday were our days of mostly lazy rest.  Just reading, relaxing and sunning ourselves as we watch the reservoir be refilled by the Colorado River.  Monday, of course, is a stock market trading day so Jerry is lost to any exploring until the market closes.  Unless there is really something we really want to see during market hours, it is better for us financially for Jerry to be doing his stock trading.  He hasn’t made us rich, (“yet” he tells me) but he is able to keep plenty of gas in the tank and food on the table so it is hard to argue about that.  Monday, 3/12/12 is our last full day here a Senator Wash as we will be visiting family and getting ready for our trek to Alaska this summer.

ANOTHER WEEK IN THE DESERT ON BLM LAND

Still Living on Hurricane Ridge at Senator Wash

   The wind is howling now.  We read that a wind storm was coming and it has definitely arrived.  Not hurricane winds but strong enough to blow over our outside chairs.  The Senator Wash reservoir below us is full so we have a lovely view down to it from inside the motor home.  Our neighbors are mostly from British Columbia and chatting with them is enjoyable.  All of this area is for boondocking only.  There are no hook-ups available here.  Most everyone has solar panels and use the generator only to supplement the energy stores in their batteries if needed.

Internet Connection on the Road

   We use the Internet daily, frequently for many hours at a time.  I like to “surf the net” reading news, political commentary, interesting science or historical articles, travel information and plan our travels.  Jerry usually trades stocks and stock options when the stock market is open and does research when the stock market is closed.  We have a Verizon Hotspot with three gigs but manage to go over the limit every month without downloading any videos, etc.  Today, we received the Samsung Hotspot we recently ordered.  It’ll allow us to use 10 gigs of 3G plus 10 gigs of 4G and when 4G is not available we can just add the 4G gigs to our 3G gig allowance.  Ha!  Now we have 23 gigs total/month to use.  Should not have to worry about going over our limits and if one device doesn’t connect, may be able to connect on the other device.  Being fairly low tech, we did worry that it would be difficult to set up the new Samsung device.  Nope, not difficult at all, just put the battery in, made sure it was charged, put in the password and it connected immediately!  While writing this post, we are downloading some podcasts for later.  Ah…it is the small things in life that please us most.

Thursday Guided Hike at Senator Wash

   Every Thursday a Guided Hike is offered to everyone and it is free.  Thursday, we all piled into a few vehicles (car pooled) and drove about 5 miles into the desert.  Then, on foot, we started hiking toward the “Potholes”.   About 2 1/2 miles later, we came to some old gold mines.  What a hard scrabble life it must have been.  They  mainly used picks and shovels.  Water’s pretty scarce in this area so water sluicing for gold was a complicated proposition but they managed.

   As we hiked, we came across some modern day gold seekers out in the middle of the desert.  They had come on ATVs with generators, large containers of water and other apparently essential equipment.  One couple told us they found $80 worth of gold in the three months they had been looking there.  Um, not so very lucrative but they said they were having fun.

   Along the way, came to a part of the Colorado River where fisherman had been catching catfish.  They would nail the head of the catfish to a wooden power pole and then skin and filet the fish while it was hanging there.  We were told that it is easier to handle the preparation of the fish that way.

   Thursdays weather was perfect for a hike; temp in the 70s with a light breeze.  Each Thursday hiking group is usually composed of about 20 people and since the hikes only last about 2-3 hours, we are done before noon leaving the rest of the day for other pursuits.

Prickley Pear cactus

Area of many abandonded mines

At the entrance to one of the mines.

A Pictograph (age unknown)

A good spot to catch catfish

Catfish heads left after the fish has been skinned and filleted

Many power lines in this area & lots of boondocking RVs in the distance