It was a seven day drive south through Canada, and looked just like this out the windshield of the truck the entire way. Mile after mile of beautiful colors and mountains. The roads were nearly empty now, we were far behind the mass of RVs that we had traveled north with. The fall colors were spectacular as we left Alaska, but by the time we got seven days south in BC we barely saw anything but green again. That was such a striking change.
I had to keep a list of our stops and took pictures of every camp spot. After 3 months they’ve all blended together, and these seven days have definitely all merged into one in our minds.
British Columbia has absolutely beautiful Provincial Parks. From the first night at Silver Lake in June, through every single park, they are all clean and tidy and on gorgeous pieces of property. Although it is hard to find ugly in BC. This one at Boya Lake is totally a must do for a return trip, and one of the prettiest places we camped all summer. We scored the last lakefront spot when we drove in mid afternoon, and could have stayed days here.
Of course it happened that one day we had to pivot and change plans. We were driving down the beautiful Cassiar Highway and decided to make some extra miles and skip one Provincial Campground and make an extra long day to the park at Meziadin Lake. Imagine our surprise when we got there and the park was closed. The next place to stay was another hour and a half at a private RV park in Kitiwanga. The woman who checked us in said that they had just closed the park because of bear problems, and sure enough now I see on the site that two days later they posted a notice that the park was closed. That was our longest day of driving, and we sure wish we had stopped now at the earlier park, but weren’t going to turn around and go 90 minutes north.
I hadn’t make any reservations for the trip south, thinking we were late enough in the season that we wouldn’t need any. But suddenly we found ourselves on a weekend back in civilization needing a campsite. All the Provincial Parks were booked solid. I checked across the border at a Harvest Host winery, but they declined our request to stay. Then I checked HipCamp and found a small private piece of property in the Fraser River Valley. It was a long drive off the highway, but a super quiet and beautiful spot. And best news was they had a hose we could use to wash the wildfire ash and bugs off the truck and trailer. So while I always think the Harvest Host sites are free because we just paid for wine, this one was free because that’s what a car wash would have cost.
We were about to cross the border back into the US when I remembered that BC has a huge Asian population and realized we were massively Dim Sum deficient. A quick Google search showed half a dozen dim sum places in Abbotsford, so we stopped for a delicious lunch before we went south across the border.
Our next stop was Deception Pass State Park, somewhere I’ve always wanted to check out. It was impressive when we saw how private the sites are here. This park is massive, and we’ll definitely make a return trip here.
The next day we had reservations on the Coupeville -> Pt Townsend ferry. Availability for our size was late in the day so we took some time walking at Fort Casey. Then there we were on the boat in the same place we had been 87 days before.
Our house sitter had one last event to attend Sunday afternoon so we hung out in Port Townsend at Fort Worden State Park.
Now Nonnie’s Diner is back home and we have some clean up time ahead. Are we glad we took this trip? Heck yes! I’ll write up a summary next week after we catch our breath.
Pix from this last leg coming home are Here.