Joining the mighty Fraser River...

After getting the Honda packed up this morning we left beautiful Smithers. The weather was mostly overcast and about 6 deg C which was twice as warm as yesterday morning. Today we're traveling to Williams Lake. The route we're taking is Highway 16 or the Yellowhead Highway. We're driving through an area that looks much like Ontario say from Orangeville to Collingwood. This is a large plateau with rolling hills called the Interior Plateau. The altitude varies somewhere between 800m and 900m. The real mountain ranges can sometimes be seen in the far distance. These are the coastal mountains to the west and the interior mountains to the east.

By the way, I forgot to mention that yesterday we crossed over into coastal mountains. The forests are quite different on the Pacific side of the mountains. The trees are much taller and mostly deciduous and large firs. Also, there is a totally different plant ecology growing on the forest floor. This is the Pacific rain forest, lush and riotous. Shortly after leaving Smithers, we're leaving the coastal mountain range again and are on the Interior Plateau with a different mix of trees.

There are a lot of farms along Hwy 16 and 97, mostly hay farms or beef cattle it appears. We are definitely no longer in the remote parts of BC, lots of small towns and hamlets! Nevertheless, the scenery is different again and we're also enjoying this part of the trip. Annie photographed quite a number of different wildflowers. She received a booklet on all the different Yukon wildflowers from a tourist information place and is trying to match the flowers we see with the description in the booklet.

When we came to Prince George, we also joined the Fraser River and turned onto Highway 97 or the Caribou Highway. The Fraser is already quite wide and a substantial river at Prince George. We will basically follow the Fraser to Abbotsford and Surrey where we will visit Annie's sister Corrie's family and our good friends Ron and Tina respectively.

The Frazer River is navigable north of the Fraser Canyon and Hell's Gate (un-navigable rapids) and again south of the canyon. Tomorrow we expect to see some spectacular scenery in the Fraser Canyon, lets hope that the weather cooperates.

BTW, today's weather was a mixed bag of sun, clouds and showers, heavy at times. As the day went on, the temperature rose to 16 deg C by the middle of the afternoon.

Since I don't have much more to say this time, I'm going to quit this blog for today. I'll post a few of the pictures we took of the various wildflowers we saw during our travels below. They are "clickable" (oh my...) to enlarge them. Enjoy...