Prince George, Trouble Finding The Right Coffee, and The Most Beautiful Drive in the World ... along a not-so-great highways!

Since I missed out on Neil's last Calgary trip, for which I am thankful, I was only too happy to hop in the Big White Truck on Thursday for a jaunt to Prince George. As well as getting out of the Lower Mainland for a couple of days, I would be able to get my new favourite 'coffee???' at the Husky in Chilliwack - English Toffee. English Toffee Coffee. It just sounds so right, doesn't it?

 I just assumed (ha ha) that one hellish trip per week was his quota.

(Neil left last Sunday afternoon for Calgary, but due to weather and road conditions, it turned into a 4-day, 3-night trip. The road between Cache Creek and Ashcroft he described as a 'semi-truck graveyard' as there were so many trucks off the road, in ditches, or even upside-down .... he was wise enough to take a nap until the next day. He doesn't usually go that route, but the other highways were closed because of avalanche threats.) 

When we got to Chilliwack, I find that their specialty coffee machine was in Rinse Mode. Neither the young guy beside me nor I noticed until I stared into a cup of hot water ... so I had to settle for plain ordinary coffee. I thought I'd brighten it up a bit with a flavour shot of caramel - and we all know two is better than one ... and added cream. I'm glad I was outdoors before I took a sip - it was like chugging a mouthful of sour kerosene. Guess with flavour shots, one greatly surpasses two. Needless to say, I went coffee-less.

We did see one truck still off the road - on the wrong side ... and this one still waiting for a tow truck to haul it away.

Actually this trip was not hellish, in the least - but it did involve a detour through some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen - and some of the scariest roads I've ever travelled.

It was spring-like when we left the Lower Mainland, and the weather and roads were great - it's not often I have the opportunity to travel these roads in the daylight, so I was snapping pictures left, right and centre. It didn't seem to take long before we came to the 7 tunnels in the Fraser Canyon.

The first one is the Yale Tunnel - as you can see, there are bikes allowed, but Breehy will never ever have the joy of zooming through here.

The Fraser Canyon Highway Tunnels were constructed in the late 1950s to about the mid 1960's as part of a Trans-Canada Highway project. There are 7 tunnels in total, the shortest being about 57 metres (190 ft); the longest, however, is about 610 metres (2,000 ft) and is one of North America's longest. They are situated between Yale and Boston Bar.

In order from south to north, they are:
Yale,
Saddle Rock,
Sailor Bar,
Alexandra,
Hell's Gate,
Ferrabee and,
China Bar.

The Hell's Gate tunnel is the only tunnel that does not have lights, while the China Bar tunnel is the only tunnel that requires ventilation. A recent project at the Ferrabee Tunnel has been to install warning lights that are activated by cyclists before they enter the tunnel. This was required because the tunnel is curved. It is expected that the China Bar and Alexandra tunnels will get the same warning lights as they too are curved.

Winter seems to be disappearing along this stretch of the road, but there's still enough snow in the mountains to make everything look pretty. Of course, if this snow were in my backyard, it wouldn't look nearly as pretty.

You can see the railroad tracks on the other side of the river. Seeing that rail bed as it winds its way north (or south, depending on which way you are looking) is a sure deterrent to my ever travelling by train.

If a picture's worth a thousand words, here's a few hundred ....

North of Boston Bar, we drove through Jackass Mountain Pass.

Jackass Mountain

50.2084999084473° N / -121.569198608398° W

19 miles north of Boston Bar
Jackass Mountain – a memorial to a mule. Wearied by its struggle over the steep, twisting Cariboo road, one loaded mule reared, bucked and fell to its death in the canyon. The long stream of freight animals closed their ranks and plodded onward to the distant Cariboo goldfields.

(not my picture .... stol ... er, borrowed from the internet.)

Unlike the mule, we kept right on truckin'

As we get closer to Spences Bridge the best scenery switches to Neil's side of the road ... this also shows his GPS, so no one has to ever worry about us getting lost.

The Coquihalla Highway was closed due to avalanches and avalanche control, so all the truckers were using Highway 1 to Cache Creek, then heading south. This was one of the busiest times I've ever seen this stretch of road.
  
On Thursday, there was a “class 4″ avalanche that was 100 metres wide and three metres deep. More than three metres of snow has fallen over this region of the Coquihalla in the last nine days, which is unprecedented for this region. - Global News

This is where the saying between a rock and a hard place came from, I would think. The rock is obvious - the hard place is waaaaaaay down hill.

Travelling down the Snake Pit before Spences Bridge. Can you figure out why this is called the Snake Pit? I think I can.

And here we come into Spences Bridge. Due to unforeseen circumstances (and the collision of two vehicles and a tanker truck) we didn't pass here on the way home.

Okay - just imagine coming up to this spot a hundred years or so ago ... and your boss telling you to put a road right through here .... and we may think we have tough jobs!

A little break for the driver and I can get some still shots - at least shots that I snap while I'm still - and not moving at 100 kmh!

It's always nice to get a breath of fresh air .... right?

Of course, we ran into snow this side of 100 Mile House. We always run into snow here.

And this is when we started losing daylight too ... so there's no more pictures for this night. We had an uneventful trip the rest of the way, ended up at the Prince George Husky about 11pm after making drop-offs at two Save-On Foods - and hunkered down for a good night's sleep.

Early Friday morning - well, 7 o'clock - we got up and we ... at least I ...stumbled to the restaurant for breakie. Neil swears the Husky in Calgary has the best breakfasts ever, and I swear that award goes to The North Country Inn in Vanderhoof, but this particular Husky has been ... okay. Except for the last couple of times. My scrambled eggs were disguised as a tough yellow omelet, and Neil's orange slice was the arse end of the orange - where mine was over 1/4 inch thick. Their chef believes Hash Browns are boiled potatoes, cut up small and waved over the grill. But the bacon was all right. After all, it WAS bacon.

The gals who work there are wonderful though. So it's all good.

After getting loaded up with a container of pulp, we headed home - a mid-morning start meant an early arrival, right? Well, not necessarily.

It was a good job Neil stopped at the Husky at 150 Mile House - we didn't know at that point the future bathroom breaks were tucked between two blockades. I grabbed my coffee mug, to give it first a good scrubbing, then a fill-up of nice English Toffee Coffee.

Alas. No English Toffee Coffee. But they did have a Flavour of the Week - Coffee Crisp Coffee. And Why not? I asked myself as I poured. It's a good job I'm more of a coffee redneck than a coffee snob.

We kept on driving along ... and pulled off in a turn-out where there was a lot of snow. I didn't get out .... but I did see two little chihuahuas playing under a No Dogs Allowed sign. I guess the dogs didn't know how to read, or even to recognize the meaning of the sign.

And it wasn't far from here we came across a group of highway workers who had our lane blocked off. This was because of the accident - seems a tanker blew up, and even took out part of the road with it. (We found out later there was one fatality.) Anyway, we had three choices: we could wait it out, but it could be a really really long wait, we could travel highway 99 through Pemberton and Whistler and all the way back to Richmond, but that would be a much longer distance, or we could drive highway 99, branch off at highway 12, and thus go around the accident by way of Lillooet, returning to our route at Lytton, and adding only 90 minutes to our time. Right.

Highway 12 is not a highway for the faint of heart, especially when all the truckers going north and heading south are using it. Two lanes most of the way (except for one exceptionally scary one lane through a slide area), either no shoulder between me and the million foot drop to the canyon below, or smooshy gravel shoulders that suck at a container's wheels. I don't know the last time I went from Oh my God .. how gorgeous is that? to Oh shit .... so many times. Because the views were just out of this world spectacular, and I've found another part of the province I want to visit.

Unfortunately the most wonderful vistas didn't make it to the blog. On my side there were miles and miles of tall raw faced mountains, stripped to stones of many colours. They were absolutely breathtaking 

But ... I did get ONE fantastic picture!

How beautiful is this?

I'm sorry - I just can't delete any of these ....

It is indeed a Long and Winding Road.

You can't know how many times I felt like just belting out this.

We finally found an empty pull-out on our side of the road, so I had another great photo op.

Looking down the canyon at a waterfall tumbling to the river ...

Unfortunately, this is where my I Phone battery died. No worries, though - I had a standby camera in my bag in the truck.

Seems like the batteries in that one were dead too. No worries, though - I had an extra couple of batteries in my bag in the truck.

Seems like they were dead too. So it's back in the truck, taking pictures with a limited range of phone, as I had it plugged in for a power transplant.

Now - note this. This is an underpass beneath the train track. Rest assured I will never ever travel in that train. However, this underpass starts off with a 90 degree entrance, and if you're in a semi with a 53' trailer, it's a one vehicle only access. If you look very closely about a third up, you'll see the tiny trail of cars following the uphill road that comes after these hairpin turns. That's where we were headed too. Oh shit. See, I told you.

We had to wait for a stream of trucks to inch through, with barely enough room to pass by. After a while, a nice person driving a car stopped on the other side to let us through ... what car drivers don't realize, is that the 10' that is the semi truck keeps to it's own side a lot better than the 53' trailer it's attached too. I think some drivers realize that now, though. It was their very own personal Oh Shit moment.

The traffic really started to build up by now, all these poor souls heading north.

Fountain Flats - a tiny bit of civilization.

Yup ... we're gonna travel that highway .... guess I know why it's called a HIGHway ... because it's way up high ... A tanker passed us when we were driving there, and Neil quietly prayed, Please don't blow up, please don't blow us, please don't blow up. If it had blown up, we'd probably still be floating down the river towards Vancouver. In about a million pieces

Sorry for the blurry picture .. but it does tell a story. Seems this is the part that's well known for its rock slides ... and here we are about to zoom over it. I was happy to see there were highway workers there stopping traffic, so everyone would have a safe crossing ...

See?

As you can, twilight was starting to set in again, and I sure felt sorry for all these drivers who were headed for that highway at night. We travelled this long and winding road to Lillooet, then crossed a big bridge to Lytton,and then we had an uneventful trip home. Thank goodness. Highway 1 was opened again when we were in Chilliwack, so it's a good thing we didn't wait out the closure.

And now I want to explore this area so much - wanna come?

But ... not so much this area in Spain - King's highway. If you go there ... send me pictures!