Travel, Nature & Us

Continuing heading North up highway 97 we passed by the famous Gold Rush towns of 70 Mile House, 100 Mile House and 150 Mile House where the waggons would stop and refresh and the impressive Cariboo Mountains. We branched off onto a smaller route towards Bowron Provincial Park, and after some beautiful lake scenery we turned onto an even smaller route and yet again another smaller and this time unpaved access road….after 25km of unpaved access road we and Delta were shaken to the core. Bowron Lake was an off the beaten track provincial campsite and it was good to be back in nature, well other than ALL the flying, biting insects (note to self buy an insect tent!) But we enjoyed watching the squirrels, gophers and woodpeckers and took a couple of local hikes to view the lake and saw evidence of Bear’s!

After our short stay at Bowron Lake we headed back out along the bumpy access road to visit the historic town of Barkerville. Barkerville is home to the Canadian Cariboo Gold Rush and where a multimillion dollar gold mining industry helped build the province of British Columbia. We spent the day learning about the history of the gold rush era, Elizabeth particularly enjoying the gold geology and mining museum and also the old print shop!

Today, the extraordinary town of Barkerville still stands as testament to British Colombia’s golden beginnings and has a unique streetscape of 125+ heritage buildings, authentic displays, museums, restaurants, shops and accommodations. It was declared a National Historic Site of Canada in 1924 and a Provincial Heritage Property in 1958, Barkerville is now the largest living-history museum in western North America and we thoroughly enjoyed our day there.