Terrace Lava Beds

On Saturday morning in prudehomme campground, Ryan hauled me out of bed at 6 AM without warning. Once I'd really woken up we quickly packed up and looked around the fog covered site. It was beautiful, rainforest feel and cedar tree smell. We got the kids up and left about 7:45! We ate breakfast in the car while driving to Terrace.

Here is one photo of the drive back to Terrace:

I took this vido on the drive to terrace earlier but didn't get a chance to upload it until now. Its just a one min video to show a little bit of the scenery: https://youtu.be/yri3M1Jqt1U

We had  great drive to Terrace and pulled up to the information centre to buy a milepost book. We somehow figured we could use our phones enough but there is no cell service in most places up north. The milepost book has every single thing thats along all the main Yukon and Alaska highways as well as Hy 37 in B.C. We were also pleasantly surprised to see that we could fill our water tank there. Ryan and Shawn filled up the tank and checked out the information centre, while Joshua and I went shopping.

Finally done and left Terrace at 10:45 for the Lava beds. After about an hour of driving the Nisga'a road the self-guided tour starts. At the start, there was just Lava Lake, a river that was turned into a large lake by the lava when the volcano erupted around the year 1775. We didn't see where the lava was; I think that area must be covered with trees and plants.

Drove on for a few minutes, then there was a short hike near Crater Creek, through the lava that we had just begun to see. Basically all the lava is lumps and flows of lava, often covered by more lava lumps. It's a dull grey, full of holes, and there are places where the crust has broken, all making for some rough going, for Joshua, in particular. You could hear the creek rushing nearby, but we never really saw it, because vegitation is growing around the creek, and we were requested to stay on the trail, which never got very close to the creek.

We also explored a couple of waterfalls that were near the road and hiked to a hole in the lava where a tree had been surrounded by lava. The lava had hardened, and then the tree had burned out of the hardened lava, leaving what they call a tree cast-a perfect impression of the tree trunk. 

The waterfalls were pretty neat, here is a short video compilation of them: https://youtu.be/2h_3M6aPOJs

Tree cast: 

 Approximately 2,000 people died from this eruption and it is Canada's worst known geophysical disaster.

The lava flow is about 3km (2miles) wide and 20km (12.5miles) long. Its one thing to read, but it was really incredible to see how much lava there was, it just went on and on and on... Here is a short video of the lava as we drove through it: https://youtu.be/uHzbclsNFc4

It was incredibly hot out during the day, around +32, but by late afternoon it was cooling down a bit, so we went to the hotspring that was near the road. However the mosquitoes were pretty bad, and then Joshua fell while in the water, and hit his chin. Shawn had the presence of mind to immediately grab him under his arms from the back, and help him back up, so I'm pretty proud of him.

We were planning to stop by the museum and info centre out there, but it ended up being too late and they were closed, so we headed back to Terrace since the kids had fallen asleep in the car anyway.

We were getting close to Terrace when we spotted a white Festiva. Ryan was quite excited to see another festiva in nearly perfect shape so we followed it quite a ways, until the driver stopped. Ryan talked with her a bit, gave her his number in case she ever wanted to sell it and then we got back on track again.

A man shouted out to us when we were driving through Terrace, so we pulled off, and discovered that the trailer doors had been left open all the way from the hotsprings. We were glad to discover that the doors weren't really damaged and nothing had fallen out of the trailer.

We got to the Ferry Island campground about 7:30pm, set up, showered the boys, ate cold spaghetti (not that great), and got to bed at 11 PM. There were quite a few mosquitoes, so we got to try out the mosquito repeller that Ryan found. It works pretty good!