(written October 24th from notes taken previously. Good crap, I’m so far behind. 😬)
First thing after getting up and doing normal morning things was to get our little butts over to the local visitor center to learn about the camping laws.
In the states, we were able to just park off of Forest roads and what not, But we didn’t want to get in trouble in Canada for anything. 😅
So we headed back into town and stopped off at the visitors center and asked some questions. They gave us a whole bunch of brochures and maps and what not about the area, and we asked about camping, and they seemed to think that it was pretty much okay for us to camp for free pretty easily. What we had read online about foreigners having to have a camping permit to do wild camping apparently wasn’t true, at least, according to them.
🤞
From there, we drove by a curling Center, which I thought was kind of fun. I’ve only ever seen curling on TV for like the Olympics or something.
Welcome to Canada, Stephen. 🙃
Next stop was going to the auto parts store that had been closed yesterday, So we could get our snow chains. Gratefully, I also learned that the tires that I already had on Rover were m+s rated tires, Which removed the little bit of stress about the possibility of getting a ticket for not having the right tires for the season.
🥳
I had called ahead, I already knew that they had the chains that we were wanting, and we bought them, a little grudgingly because they were so blasted expensive. I think they were like $170, or something like that. Some of the sting is taken because that’s Canadian, so it’s more like $135, but still, super high price, in my opinion, for tire chains.
Oh well. We’re considering it like insurance.
Hopefully we won’t need them, But unfortunately, snow chains are one of the few things that stores don’t let you take back, even if they’ve never been opened.
😶
What I wouldn’t have given for an AutoZone. 😅
At least we have chains.
From there, we headed Northeast toward a town called Kamloops that was on our way to the Northern end of the Rockies range.
We didn’t stop for anything, except gas, wanting our gas tanks to be as full as possible before entering the wilderness area of the mountains, inexperienced with the ease or lack thereof of getting fuel.
I was doing a little bit of JustAnswer working, And we periodically stopped to take pictures in beautiful places along the way. 😊
As we were getting into the foothills of the Rockies, we were passing a provincial Park called Wells Gray, A place my brother-in-law had mentioned as a really beautiful place, so I had put it on our list. I suggested to My mom that we give it a look, and gratefully, there was another gas station right at the entrance to the park, so we topped off the fuel just to be safe, And went to The park’s visitor Center that was right across the street from the gas station, using their bathroom as well as chatting with the ladies there about camping rules and what not, as we were still a little paranoid because the lady in Merritt wasn’t an official.
The people at the park visitors Center were more specific. They said we didn’t need to worry about a camping path because we were non-canadians, but we couldn’t just camp anywhere. There were designated campgrounds, and then there were places called recreation sites. Recreation sites were much less maintained but were totally legal to camp at and often would have at least a pit toilet.
All of the regular campgrounds, except for two, had already closed down for the season because… Well, it’s October And the weather was getting to that point where anything can happen.
Gratefully, for us, we had like 5 days of clear weather on the calendar before the rain/snow was to move in, And the temperatures seemed to indicate that even if the rain moved in, it would be rain and not snow.
🥳
Good timing, for us. 😊
So we headed north toward the park, passing the last remnants of private property before entering the park itself. Our first stop was at Spahats Falls. We have been winding up a road with relatively flat terrain, at least on the roadsides, so we were pretty surprised to encounter what we did.
We parked at the falls parking lot, grabbed our bear spray, and walked toward the falls. As we walked down the trail toward the falls, through the trees we could see that the flat terrain dropped off a sheer cliff in a massive canyon.
😶
Three sides of sheer cliff dropping off from relatively flat terrain hundreds and hundreds of feet below.
It was nutty.
And gorgeous. 😊
We wandered around trying to see where the water was coming from, because we could hear it rushing, but it was in a little slot canyon type thing right before the main canyon and the significant drop off.
So we wandered on the little walking trails over to the viewing area and were greeted with the The gorgeous Vista of shear cliff faces with skinny, but hundreds of feet tall waterfall.
I love waterfalls. 😊
We chatted with the park workers that were there taking measurements and doing the preliminary work to rebuild the decking area next spring. They were sort of doing proof of concept stuff making sure they had solid foundations and what not for the coming year’s work.
While we were there, I found A lock blade that someone had stabbed into the railing and just left there, so I asked the ranger people about it, and they didn’t know anything about it, so I gave it to them to give to anybody who might Show backup looking for it.
From there, we started driving away and saw that there was a lookout point nearby, so we headed over to the lookout point.
The lookout point was super beautiful. It was a much wider open view of the canyon that you could see from the cliffs right next to the waterfall. The canyon opened up significantly, with the river down below, trees and cliff walls and beautiful colors and a big cave in one of the cliff walls in the distance.
Super cool.
I noticed parked in that parking lot was a woman driving a vehicle that I thought I recognized from the Walmart parking lot. She also had a German Shepherd, so I was pretty sure that even though that Walmart was a 2 and 1/2 hour drive away, I thought maybe it was the same person.
We started chatting, and I asked her if she was at the Walmart parking lot the night before, and she said she was.
Small world. 🙃
For her privacy’s sake, I’ll call her Nancy.
We chatted with Nancy for a little bit, just casual conversation getting to know her. She was on a cross country trip from British Columbia to Ontario, just barely getting started.
Super friendly woman, and it didn’t hurt that she was attractive to me. 🙃
Her German Shepherd was also friendly, a little standoffish at first, but then one of the biggest play fetch nuts that I think I’ve ever seen.
He wasn’t interested in being scratched or pet. All he wanted was to play fetch. Over and over and over and over and over again. Sticks, toys, rocks, you name it.
She had a huge chew toy rope for him, which he promptly chewed in half as I threw him toy over and over and over again.
We talked about where we were headed and where we were planning on staying for the night. We had gotten all that great information at the visitor center, so we were able to give her some suggestions and invited her to join us if she wanted.
We had a little map with things circled on it which I took a picture of and texted to her. Her phone was dead, though, so she wasn’t going to be able to receive it right away. But once she got her phone charged, she was going to be able to meet us if she wanted.
Anyway, so we invited her to join us at Helmcken Falls, and then we started heading back on our journey.
I wanted Nancy to join us, but I wasn’t sure what kind of vibes I was getting from her.
On the way back from the viewing area, as we were getting ready to go back on the main highway, I noticed there were some huge mushrooms growing out of the road. They looked like the kinds that maybe you could eat, but I wasn’t sure. The closest I could find to them online doing an image search seemed to corroborate that they were a species that could be eaten, I think. But… Mushrooms aren’t something that I’m willing to risk my health or life on at this point. We took pictures because they were cool looking mushrooms, and then we headed north up the main road through the park.
It was starting to get toward dusk as we drove North, stopping regularly to take pictures of beautiful waterfalls and beautiful scenery. The fall coloring was in full swing and gorgeous.
As we were driving north, we passed the parking lot of a trailhead, and I noticed that Nancy’s van was at the trailhead. It wasn’t the same place that we had talked about meeting up, and she was busy with lots of the stuff from her van all spread out as she was organizing things. That sort of said to me that she wasn’t really interested in meeting up with us, but she did say that she had forgotten which Falls to meet us at, and she was at the parking lot of *a* falls, so… maybe she actually was interested in joining us.
Because she had gotten lost, and because she hadn’t gotten the text message I sent her yet, I ended up just giving her the map that the lady at the Wells gray provincial Park Visitors Center had given us and marked up for us.
Because it was starting to get late, we told her that we were just going to go to the campsite for the night instead of going to the falls, and we showed her on the map which campsite was supposedly still open and free.
I think she said she was probably going to go ahead and stay there, but I didn’t remember for sure.
On the drive to the campsite, there were more beautiful vistas to take pictures of, including the sunset going down behind the western hills.
😍
Wells Gray is just on the western slopes of the Rockies, and the hills around you are tall enough that you can’t really see the actual craggy peaks above unless you hike on the trails up toward the mountains, past the hills, but it’s still super beautiful.
I love that there are waterfalls everywhere. 🥰
We attempted to go visit Dawson Falls, which was near the campground we were going to, but we were apparently in the wrong place for that, And the sun was down by then, so we just continued down the road, took some more pictures of beautiful waterfalls and after sunset horizon vistas, and finally split off the main road down the dirt road toward the campsite (to that point in the trip in Wells Gray, we had been driving on a paved road).
When we got to the campsite, one of the first things we noticed was the sign out front saying that it was $20 a night to stay there. That’s not really that big of a deal, but we had been told it was free, so we were a bit confused. I was also a little worried for Nancy because we had told her it was free, and I didn’t want her to have an unpleasant surprise if she did decide to go to the same campground.
We wandered around looking for a suitable campsite regardless, the sign saying that the camp Ranger, or whatever you want to call her, would be by in the morning to collect money.
So we weren’t sure which to believe, the lady at the front desk saying it was free at this point in the year, or the sign saying that it was $20. I went around to different campsites that had other people in them and saw they had their little receipts clipped to the post in front of the campsite, so other people were paying.
🤔
So I grabbed a receipt thingy wrote on it that we had been told by the lady at the visitor center that it was free, clipped it to the receipt post, and figured that we would go ahead and pay in the morning when the lady came by to collect fees if it was indeed still a fee place.
We picked one of the wider open camping spots, kind of a double spot because it had two campfires /barbecue rings and two picnic tables. The Hope was to be able to have clear enough skies for starlink. 😊
Used the pit toilet bathrooms, and wandered around the campground a little bit. After we had been there a little while, I thought I saw Nancy’s vehicle drive up through the woods. She didn’t make a loop and drive by our campsite, just, so I wasn’t sure she was going to stay.
So I walked down the road to see if she did pull into one of the campsites, and she did, but her van was pitch dark, so clearly she had immediately pulled in and gone straight to bed.
I was a little disappointed, and again sort of took it as maybe she didn’t want to join us Pat was grateful to have a place to stay for the night.
I headed back to Rover, and Mom and I crashed for the night. Second day in Canada, first full day.
And gorgeous so far. 😊
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 