Wednesday June 17, 1998 - Stewart-Cassiar

Boya Lake - sunny with cloudy periods

We moved to different campsites, picking better ones than the night before. I went swimming off the dock in the lake, it was very very cold but I got my hair washed. The water is so clear and turquoise! The park operator said it was a limestone lake and that is why there are no mosquitoes or biting flies. But there are loons and dragon flies.

Boya Lake, after the rain

There was a bit of rain but it dried very quickly. We are now on the Liard Plain, a glaciated terrain that is quite dry.  The sun sets just after 10 pm and rises at 5 am but it never gets fully dark now, the light just dims  around 1 - 3 am.

Sparky prefers big sticks

Sparky is a cockapoo (cocker spaniel/toy poodle cross) who loves to swim and chase sticks. Not just little sticks but big ones, some around 6 feet long! Ray and Laurena had to keep him leashed when we camped on the Stikine or he would have jumped in and been washed away. But here it was very entertaining watching him swim after sticks in the lake.

I was loaned a fishing rod for this trip so Ray spent some time showing me how to cast and how to untangle the line when it backlashed. He gave me a swivel to snap lures onto. Ray said I could expect to spend a few hours just getting used to it. He said that the reel on this rod was a bit tricky, and I do seem to spend a large amount of time untangling the line, compared to actually fishing. Fishermen here talk a lot about Grayling. I have no idea what that is, but that's what is in most streams.

Ray and Laurena are both on their second marriages, Ray has four kids the oldest of whom is 46. He had an operation to remove half his lung (cancer due to smoking) which slows him down a bit but they are both quite active and he is very outgoing and chats with everybody.

Tuesday June 16, 1998 - Stewart-Cassiar

Tuya River from Telegraph Creek road

Boya Lake - sunny and windy

The drive back to Dease Lake was uneventful. From Telegraph Creek to the Stewart-Cassiar turnoff is about 115 km but since it is a dirt road with steep up and down sections, you have to drive very slowly for half of that distance.

Tall skinny trees on the Stewart-Cassiar

At one point I stopped and saw a bear, but as soon as the bear saw me it disappeared into the woods. We stopped for lunch in a grove of cottonwoods that broke the wind a bit, and threw sticks for Sparky. Yohan is too old for chasing sticks.

Rest break on the Stewart-Cassiar

Ray suggested that maybe the burnt out fuse for the dome light was causing my radio not to work so in Dease Lake I stopped in at an auto repair place and bought some fuses and Ray was right, the new dome light fuse fixed my radio.

Dease Lake was having a selective power outage, one of the two gas stations there had no power to operate the gas pumps and there were line-ups at the other station with only one girl to run the place. She could only deal in cash, she couldn't take credit cards. The grocery store had some lights out and some cash registers out. One of the registers stopped while I was waiting to talk to the cashier.

Another time on the Stewart-Cassiar we stopped to photograph some mountain sheep. They were completely unafraid, allowing us to come right up to them.

The campground at Boya Lake was beautiful. The water was a lovely turquoise blue and there were no mosquitoes! We walked around with the dogs, had beer after supper and we agreed that we would spend another day here, it was so nice. And I was enjoying the company.

Beautiful turquoise Boya Lake, impossible to capture the colour!

Sunday June 14, 1998 - Stewart-Cassiar

The Bear Glacier near Stewart

Kinaskan Lake - rainy

The Stewart-Cassiar Highway does not go to Stewart (or Cassiar for that matter) but you have to turn off the highway to go to Stewart. On the way you pass a glacier on the far side of the river. It is the Bear Glacier and it is quite blue. Stewart is on the coast and it is also on the Alaska border, immediately across the border is the town of Hyder. I didn't plan to spend any time there but I did cross the border and drive through Hyder and then back to Stewart again. I think I spent all of 15 minutes between border crossings. There was a rodeo going on in Stewart, I think the horses in the trailer were headed to the rodeo because later in the day I saw their truck in town.

My truck on the muddy Stewart-Cassiar

It was a dismal day. Leaving Stewart the radio in my truck stopped working. I tried to set up my portable CD player but couldn't get it going either. The Stewart-Cassiar highway was only partially paved and I spent most of the day driving on the muddy parts. I stopped at a rest area to make some lunch in the rain. There was a a big RV already there. When I pulled into the rest area a young couple came out of the RV. They were stopped there because a few days ago they got two flat tires on their rig and had to wait for new tires to be delivered, Monday night at the earliest. They were driving from Arizona to Alaska. At least they had all the comforts of a big RV while they waited for their tires, but every time a vehicle pulled into the rest area they came out to socialize.

Shortly after I arrived at the rest area a camper truck that I had passed earlier in the mud stopped in. Ray and Laurena and their little dog Sparky were travelling to Alaska from Victoria. After a short time socializing with the folks from the RV and the camper I headed out down the road. In the photo above I think the camper appears in the distance on the highway, you can just make it out if you expand the photo.

In the evening I pulled into the Kinaskan Lake campground and Ray and Laurena arrived a short time later and pulled into the site next to mine. We chatted about travelling and dogs and so forth and it looked like we were travelling the same direction for awhile. They were talking about taking a side trip to Telegraph Creek. I also was interested in going there. They had talked to a man earlier in the day who had said that the road into Telegraph Creek was very steep and dangerous which kind of worried me, I didn't really want to tackle it on my own.

Kinaskan Lake

The rain finally let up and it was a pleasant clear evening.

Saturday June 13, 1998 - Stewart-Cassiar Highway

The Nisga'a lava bed

Cloudy day

I left Prudhomme Lake as early as I could and drove to Terrace, then up to the Nisga'a Lava Beds. This is a lava flow from a few hundred years ago before Europeans arrived in the mountains. It is a large area that covers some former Nisga'a villages, it was eerie to think about how this lava flowed over the land and destroyed existing villages. Today very little grows on the lava bed, it is still pretty barren. There is lava gravel and a few tiny trees and a lot of yellow lichen.

I wanted to see this lava bed because years ago when I lived in Ottawa I went to a talk by a Nisga'a chief about the land claim treaty talks being conducted then. He said that this lava bed was an important piece of evidence in the Nisga'a land claim because they had oral stories handed down about how this lava bed was created, the first time that oral stories were counted as evidence of a claim. In the story, the lava flow was retribution for some young Nisga'a boys mistreating salmon in the river.

Kitwanga totems

After walking around there a bit I drove back to Terrace, bought gas and headed for Kitwanga, on the Stewart-Cassiar highway (Highway 37). This highway goes from Terrace to the Alaska Highway in the Yukon. It does not start in Stewart or go to Cassiar, in fact you can't drive to Cassiar now at all. But that is what they call this road.

Kitwanga totems

I have been reading Emily Carr's journals and I know that she spent time in Kitwanga and Kitwancool drawing and painting the totem poles there. Most of the poles have been moved to a single location in a field by the road. When I got there the light was not great but I tried to photograph them anyway.

Kitwancool totem painted by Emily Carr: "the Totem Mother"

I have become quite familiar with Carr's paintings and thought I recognized some of the totems. There was a First Nations fort on a hilltop which was similar to old pioneer forts. the campground there was just a big empty yard with picnic tables and gravel which didn't really appeal to me so I continued driving up the road until I found a small lake I could park by. There was a truck with a big horse trailer already parked there but it was late and no one was about. I could hear the horses in their trailer snorting. When I went to bed it was drizzling out.

More Kitwancool totems