We departed Prince George and headed west toward Prince Rupert, BC, which is where we will catch the Alaska Marine Ferry. The first sign was a bit intimidating when it listed the distance to Prince Rupert at 721 but fortunately that was kilometers not miles. We went through Vanderhoof which claims to be the geographical center of BC. We pulled into a small mall in Burns Lake for lunch. After lunch, we tried to go to the mall which had a bakery but the mall was closed on Sundays. We continued onward to Telkwa, a town of 1,300 about halfway between Prince George and Prince Rupert, and checked into Fort Telkwa Riverfront RV Campground. The campground advertises high speed wifi and a high pressure RV wash so when we found out it had 50 amp electric we were pleasantly surprised. I washed the bugs off the front of the coach and hooked up. The wifi was as advertised. After dinner, we drove around Smithers the “big” city about 10 miles west, population 5,400. The people of Smithers call themselves Smithereens. The big site in Smithers was a rainbow.
Day 75, June 15, 2019, Saturday. Prince George, BC
Walmart closed at 10:00 pm so it made for a very quiet night. Prince George is a city of 70,000 people in central British Columbia and for the life of me I cannot understand why this city is here. Aside from being the largest city we will visit in the next couple weeks (I think until we hit Fairbanks) and filling our refrigerator and fuel tanks, there is nothing to do here. We went downtown to the Saturday morning farmers’ market which was one block and took all of 10 minutes. Then we visited three parks and walked around the parks. Back to the coach for lunch where I changed into shorts for the first time since we left the southeast. It was a sunny day and the temp reached 80. In the afternoon, we visited the botanical garden at the University of Northern BC and that took all of 15 minutes. We ended up at an indoor mall to get our steps in and into the a/c. Well, at least Prince George has a quiet Walmart.
Day 74, June 14, 2019, Friday. Prince George, BC (90 miles)
After a quiet night at the Quesnel Walmart with no mosquito interruptions, we headed to the Quesnel Visitor Center which had ample RV parking. With permission, we left the coach there and drove to the Pinnacles Provincial Park for a short hike along a cliff which provided a panoramic view of the city and the feature of the park, the Pinnacles or “hoodoos”. When we return to the coach at the visitor center, we had lunch and when attaching the car I noticed something leaking from the coach. Yes, the worst possible leak, the black water valve! After my attempts to fix it failed, the visitor center helped by doing a search for RV repair shops. Of course we were concerned, with it being close to 3 pm on a Friday afternoon, that we would not have a functioning toilet until Monday, and Rosemary hinted it may be hotel time. After leaving one voice mail and then one rejection we were told that a pubic sani dump was only a block away. We quickly went there and dumped our tanks to at least stop the leaking. Then we headed south, the opposite direction of our desired path, about 10 minutes to Chemo RV. The service advisor, Dave Bianchi, took us right in, the time being 3:30. While the valve was being replaced, I asked Dave if they could also fix the storage bin latch that had been repaired on day one of our trip but which repair had failed. The valve and latch were fixed and we were on our way by 4:30. Chemo RV was wonderful--They quickly made the repairs and the price was very reasonable and with the exchange rate, it was a bargain! Not only that, they told us that the sani dump also had fresh city water which we failed to see on our earlier stop there. We filled our fresh water tank at the sani dump and then hit the road north. We arrived in Prince George a little before 7:00 and checked into Walmart. We really lucked out finding Chemo RV and they saved our weekend.
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