TWO PEAS AND THE POD: CANADA: CASSIAR HIGHWAY (NORTHERN ½)

SATURDAY

KINASKAN LAKE
PROVINCIAL PARK

CASSIAR HIGHWAY, BC

BRITISH COLUMBIA

DESTINATION: THE LOWER 48

17%	83%

COMPLETED - 237 miles=(381 kilometers) ⟺ 1112 miles=(1789 kilometers) - STILL TO GO

We have a longer than normal travel day planned for today, so it was up early and on the road by 8:00AM.

First thing we had to do was move ROVER and THE POD across the street to the gas station/grocery store/cafe/laundromat to get a big breakfast, we don't want me getting hungry while driving down the road.

Next we had to backtrack 13-miles west on the Alaskan Highway to get to the northern entrance of the Cassiar Highway (BC Route 37).

It wasn't long before we had our first of two black bear sightings along the road today.

The Cassiar Highway is 450-miles of remote highway that is very lightly traveled. It runs north/south in British Columbia and while most of it is paved, there are some gravel sections to deal with also. Even the paved part rarely has any striping, no white lines to indicate where the road shoulder starts or yellow lines down the middle to keep you on your side of the road. Both of those conditions lead to it being a less than safe road to travel upon.

But if you stay alert and watch the road, it does make for a very scenic drive.

Our first extended stop along the route today was at the Cassiar Mountain Jade Store in Jade City. A full 90% of all jade in the world is from this area of the Cassiar Mountains and this store is filled floor to ceiling with all kinds of items made from jade.

They have so much product here they leave some of it unattended outdoors at night.

They also have some wood carvings out in front of the store that I found interesting.

Of course Tricia now has two new pieces to add to her little curio cabinet on her nightstand.

The item on the left is obviosly a grizzly bear with a salmon in it's mouth.

The item on the right is called an "inuksuk", a First Nation word meaning rock cairn,
used as a marker for travel routes, fishing places, burial grounds or to mark a food cache.

Our second bear sighting came just before going over a bridge spanning a very swift moving river beneath it. There were many bridges over rivers today, so I'm not sure which one this was.

With 75-miles still to go to reach our destination I notice that pressure was building in my ears, Tricia noticed it too. I knew we had been steadily going uphill for a while. At the same time I noticed that our MPG had been slowly declining. We soon found out why!

The highest point on the entire 450-mile long Cassiar Highway is at Gnat Pass (elevation 4071 feet) and we just passed a sign telling us we were there.

Approaching the northern shore of Kinaskan Lake where we will be camped for the night.

After that it was all downhill, until we reached the Kinaskan Lake Provincial Park's campground at the southern end of the lake, which was still at a very respectable 2713-feet of elevation.