Canada’s Yellowhead Highway

Up until mid-week the forecast has called for rain nearly every day.  Tuesday was pretty drizzly and dreary, so we spent the afternoon at the Miette Hot Springs pool, a natural hot spring that they channel into a series of pools heated to different temperatures.  This hot springs was very like the Radium Hot Springs in that it just looks like a regular swimming pool – but when it was raining you could see the steam rising up off the pool. 

Wednesday started out overcast as well, but by early afternoon it had cleared up so we headed east on Highway 16 towards Maligne Lake (that’s nearby Medicine Lake, in the first photo above).  Both Medicine and Maligne Lakes feed the Maligne River, which has carved a deep canyon with a nice hiking trail. The river gorge is crossed by several bridges, and the canyon is very dramatic and narrow at the beginning. We hiked as far as the fifth bridge – a rickety suspension bridge that swayed with every step.

The forecast for today (Thursday) called for zero percent chance of rain – hooray! – so we made the most of it by taking Highway 16 west towards the town of Prince George.  Highway 16 is known as the Yellowhead Highway (named after a blond Iroquois warrior).  We weren’t the only ones enjoying the sunshine – all the forest creatures seemed to be out and about enjoying it too.  Today we had a record of 7 bear sightings (including one grizzly).  They seem to just hang out in the verge by the roadside, munching on the vegetation there.

One of the nicest stops today was the Mount Robson Provincial Park, which we passed through just as we entered British Columbia.  It was a gorgeous day, and the visitor’s center has a pretty meadow behind it with a spectacular view of Mt. Robson.

We arrived in Prince George in the afternoon.  Prince George is one of the biggest cities on the Yellowhead Highway and we had high hopes for the downtown pub scene.  Actually we were disappointed there – the town seems more industrial than quaint, and we didn’t really see anyplace we wanted to stop so instead we headed over to the Railway Museum.

At first glance it just looked like a railroad junkyard – the perfect place to test the efficacy of our tetanus shots.  But on closer inspection, they had some great historic old railway cars, some of which you could walk through, sit in the engineer’s set, etc. 

We thought the museum was worth the price of admission, especially since the very helpful lady at the admissions desk gave us 1/2 price tickets and gave us excellent advice on where to find a decent pub, where we had some frosty beers and an excellent meal.