Burns Lake to Meziadin Lake Provincial Park
Our final few days of the trip had only the vaguest plan of action, and the weather played a big part in the way they played out. Prince Rupert unfortunately got deleted from the itinerary, as did hiking at Smithers, but all in all it worked out well.
On Days 49 and 50 – Saturday and Sunday, June 11 and 12 – we put a total of 411 km (255 mi) on the motorhome, and a few more on the Tracker. Click here to open an interactive version of the map in a new window.
It had poured all night and morning at Burns Lake, so by 10:15 we were hooked up and ready to head west in search of sunshine.
By the time we stopped at this rest area east of Smithers just before noon, the skies were at least brighter.
Cathy checked RV park reviews as we got close to Smithers, and we decided that the small Glacier View RV Park (20 sites) would be good. It was perfect – we were the first arrivals of the day, and got the site furthest from the highway noise (#20), though it didn’t have the glacier view out the front windows. The park has had a great deal of work done recently, and is very nice, for $31.35 for 30-amp full services.
Cathy and I spent the rest of the day looking around Smithers, enjoying some sun occasionally. When Cathy wanted to go into a kitchen shop, I probably rolled my eyes, but it was me that came out with a bag – they had a good sale on Riedel single-malt whiskey glasses 🙂
For dinner I took Cathy to my favourite restaurant in town, the Mexican Trackside Cantina. It was excellent as always (though Cathy makes better margaritas 🙂 ).
I had hoped to be able to hike the difficult Glacier Gulch Trail on Sunday, to expand on my article about the Twin Falls Recreation Site, and we were open to staying another day to make that happen, but despite a fairly decent weather forecast, and it had potential even at 05:00, the clouds soon lowered and got wet. This photo shot from the RV park shows the Hudson Bay glacier I’d planned to hike to.
We were on the road by about 10:30, with Meziadin Lake Provincial Park the destination. Nothing of note happened on the drive, and by about 4:00 pm we were set up in a beautiful site on the shore of Meziadin Lake, with power and good wifi! Yes, good wifi in the middle of nowhere – and yet many (most?) commercial RV parks up here will cry and whine that it just can’t be done. Anyway, good value for $27, but $5 total for wifi access for as long as you stay.
When we arrived, we were the 2nd rig to set up on a spit with about 10 sites, all of which had “Available” tags on the posts. At about 6:00 pm, a camper-truck from Colorado pulled up as I was about the pay the park operator, and he claimed that he had reserved the site we were in. After a couple of minutes of his bitching, including saying that we might have just taken an “Available” tag from another site and put it on ours, I said that I’d pull up stakes and move 20 feet or whatever to one of the other available sites. Perhaps realizing how stupid he sounded, he agreed to take the one beside us. Geez…
Meziadin Lake is beautiful, but sudden violent storms blew through often – this guy took advantage of a calm period to get his canoe out, but didn’t go very far. With high water, there was pretty much no place to land if a wind came up. Mosquitoes were quite bad, so some wind was a good thing.
The park was great for the dogs. Even though there was only a few feet of water access over by the boat dock, there’s lot of good walking.
With a bit of a breeze, some good bug dope and long sleeves and pants, our first evening at Meziadin was perfect. The next day, we’d day-trip to the two largest glaciers around Stewart.
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