Smithers to Prince Rupert June 14


Thursday morning we left Smithers to head west again. Our first stop was Moricetown canyon which is known for being a good spot to watch the native fishermen spear fishing. It was too early in the year for that but its still a nice sight to see.
After that we stopped at the Hagwilget Canyon bridge which is just north of New Hazelton. That is the first time I have felt uneasy driving over a bridge, it is pretty incredible so we pulled over and walked across it. A bridge has been there a very long time but when the current one was built in 1932 it was the highest suspension bridge in Canada. Its a really incredible sight but all our videos and pictures turned out terribly so I included one off wikipedia.
provincial flower of B.C
We went on and stopped at Gitwangak Battle Hill National Historic Site near Kitwanga. It was a fortified villiage built in the late 1700's on top of an incredibly steep naturally formed hill which was right beside a river. It had walls all the way around the perimeter to which they attached logs with sharpened branch stubs so when they were attacked they would roll the logs down on the people who were climbing up the steep hill.
This is a video I took from the top while Shawn was climbing down https://youtu.be/NVx2XIr2Zpo

We left there and went to the nearby St. Paul's Church and Julie got yelled at for climbing the tower. So dont climb the tower even though its obvious a lot of people do climb it and have parties inside... There were no signs explaining why it is special, so we don't know anything about it other than its really old.
The next stop was Terrace and we had a late, but very nice lunch with Jackie Lieuwen who was a classmate of mine when I lived in Houston. It was cold and raining a little but we went to the Terrace Heritage Park Museum. Lots of cool stuff to see on the guided tour we had so I will just post a couple photos.
A hydraulic chainsaw

A hydraulic monitor for blasting away hillsides of creeks for mining.

A truck built by a company that believed the next big thing would be people buying truck 'kits' that were everything except the cab. You built your own custom cab. It didn't quite work out for them.
This is an old dance hall built with logs placed vertically.

Listening to an old phonograph https://youtu.be/QKwyop_YmeI

After we finished there we decided to drive to Prince Rupert instead of staying in Terrace since it was still a bit early and we had a late lunch. The highway and scenery starts changing west of smithers but it really changes west of Terrace, that was an incredible drive! From Jasper to the Lakes district your driving over steep mountain passes, going way up and way down. The highway is nice and wide with lots of traffic and tourists. From Prince George to Smithers you go through wide valleys with incredible mountains on each side and the highway is the same. West of Terrace the highway gets narrow, the bends are a lot sharper and there was almost no traffic on the road. You drive right beside the skeena river at its level most of the time and you are going through a very narrow valley. In some spots its not even really a valley, its steep sided mountains for each river bank. One spot you even drive under the edge of a mountain. The sides of the mountains are really steep but they have rounded tops as opposed to the slightly less steep mountains with pointy peaks in the rockies. The trees and undergrowth are very different too, lots and lots of undergrowth and waterfalls everywhere. The pictures don't do it justice at all but hopefully you can see a bit of what it is like.

We got to a free campsite close to Prince Rupert and camped there. The guy who owns it is trying to sell oceanfront lots and if you ask you can camp there until he sells them. It was a bit muddy and there were lots of bugs but it was way too late to try anything else. We made spagetti for supper which was supposed to be fast but it wasn't ready until 10 to 10 and we didnt get to bed until midnight. It was frustrating because we got there just after 7:30 and it was still midnight before we got to bed without doing anything other than setting up and eating really.











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