North through British Columbia - Alaska and Points North: Tips and Tales from the Road - page 38

Up the Fraser Canyon
Shaking off the suburbs of Vancouver, the plan was to take Hwy #1 to Hope where we'd
veer north and keep going till we hit Alaska.
Good plan. Unfortunately, of all the days in the year to leave town we'd chosen the first long
weekend of summer. Being sort of retired-self-unemployed we are usually clever enough to
avoid these mass migrations. But we'd been so excited about finally getting the van on the
road that we'd overlooked the whole first-long-weekend-of-summer scenario.
We did what any boomer does when faced with a freeway full of toy-toting families; jumped
off and hit our favourite breakfast chain for a few hours with the weekend paper. We are
retired, remember? No urgency to get to the lake by lunchtime.
It worked. By the time we'd waded through all seven sections of the weekend paper and
gotten our money's worth in coffee refills the parade had passed.
In goes Willie (Nelson) and we are on the road again.
What I particularly like about road trips is watching how the landscape transitions as the
kilometres click by. We start this journey in the south-west corner of British Columbia, the
Fraser Valley. This landscape is all about the primary colours of a lush agricultural land-
scape; red barns, black and white cows, blue lakes, yellow buttercups and masses of the
puffy green trees children draw in art class.
JustafewmilesbeyondChilliwackthehighwaystartsclimbingtheedgesofacanyonwhose
walls were carved through the Coast Mountain Range by the mighty Fraser River. Traffic
undulates through the mountain passes, racing along at speeds that would have astonished
the gold miners humping through here with their pack mules 150 years ago.
The Cariboo Gold Rush began in 1858 when 30,000 prospectors arrived to begin working
their way up the Fraser Canyon. The canyon itself was a big disappointment in terms of
gold, but in 1862 Billy Barker struck pay-dirt in Williams Creek and the rush was on.
Over100,000weretomakethetrekfromFortLangleytoHopethenveernorthuptheFraser
Canyon to the new town of Barkerville just 85 km from Quesnel. All manner of roadhouses,