We left Duhu Lake and its gorgeous reflection to drive 454km to Muncho Lake. Every side track here seems to have an oil or gas facility or a compressor. We have passed several work towns made entirely from portacabins and containers. Some of them seem to be on their way South, on the back of huge trucks, which can’t be good for local employment here. The skies turned a bit grey so it made for a good driving day. We stopped at Fort Nelson and popped into the visitor centre. I rang the conservation line to report the injured bear, we used the free WiFi and had lunch. We set off once more and saw some stone sheep, big horn sheep and caribou at the roadside.
The multi-coloured trees, especially the yellow aspen, looked lovely in the huge valleys.
Eveything is so vast but this part of Canada looks so different to The Rocky Mountains even though it also had huge mountains. The Summit Pass was 1200m high and then we started to drop a bit. We arrived at Muncho Lake just in time for a chat to our neighbour and sunset. Two doors down our neighbours were blasting out awful music to the whole camp ground but thankfully at 8pm it seemed their battery went flat – bliss!
At 8am the lake was like a mirror so I set off across the lake in rubber ducky. There was an odd cry from a loon which carried across the water. On my way back across the wind picked up and my hands and feet were freezing by the time I landed (could have done with my dry suit).
Got back and we had a hot breakfast to warm up. Next stop was Liard Hot Springs, they were amazing. It was like having a hot bath in a river, in the middle of the forest – best hot springs so far and it certainly warmed me up!
The scenery for our drive was gorgeous with multi-coloured trees as far as the eye could see, raging rivers, huge canyons and mountains. We also were lucky enough to see caribou, lots of bison, a couple of black bears, a coyote and a porcipine.
We arrived at Watson Lake to find the Northern Lights Centre closed but the lady at the visitor centre (who was like Patsy from Ab Fab) told us we had a good chance to see the real thing that night. We had a quick look at the Forest of Signs, which now has over 84,000 signs all started by one homesick GI in 1942.
We couldn’t find a liquor store open (it was Sunday evening and they next opened on Tuesday!) so headed to the campground on the lake edge to be greeted with an amazing pink sunset accompanied by loons calling to each other. Just perfect!
Unfortunately the Northern Lights didn’t come out to play. With a rainy morning we added our sign to the forest and used the visitor centre WiFi to catch up with home. And then we started heading south down the Cassiar Highway.
