After a wonderful nights sleep, and breakfast with Ed and Sarah, I packed up the car and got ready to set out on my adventure proper. No more friends or family to stay with - From here on out the real adventure starts, heading north into the wilds, with cold and unsettled weather still, and not quite sure what surprises await me !! But for this morning, the sun is shining, and although it was only about 8 deg C, I quickly removed the roof, said farewell to Ed and Sarah, and, once the farm track was safely negotiated (despite the additioal rain overnight), I headed back down to Little Fort on Hwy 5 before turning west and north towards Prince George. From here on I am on roads I have never been on before, although I have travelled them on the map many times over the past 2 years, and all the names on the route are now very familiar to me, which makes it all very odd.
Before I even got to Little Fort, I saw a coach coming north towards me, and I thought it looked like "my Aussie's Coach" from the gas station the day before, but couldn't be sure. At the last moment the coach driver recognised Elsie and waved, and I immeditely shot up my hand in recognition - They had spent the night in Kamloops, I guess, but I didn't expect to see them again !!! Very shortly after that, surprise number 2 of the day - A brief but very intense hail storm !! I didn't even see a cloud - It just suddenly hailed on me !! Got a bit damp, but was laughing my head off at the suddenness of it and before I could even think of stopping to put the roof up, it was over !!
The small road (Hwy 24) across from Little Fort to Mile House was spectacular. A quick winding climb to about 1100 metres into snow, and some still partially frozen lakes down on the left - Bridge Lake and then Sheridan Lake. Lovely drive in the morning sun, although the temp dropped to about 2 degrees at the top so I was well rugged up !
After that, the road up to Prince George was really quite boring, although I have to say the weather I experienced wasn't !! I cannot believe how fast the weather changes up here - Literally one minute you are driving along in sunshine, and then, without a word of warning, there is a sudden short rain storm, or hail storm, or even a blizzard at one stage, and then before you know it, you are back in the sunshine again !! The snow storm was the most interesting - For some time the sky had been getting blacker and blacker, but each time I thought we were about to get rained on, the road turned away from the clouds and we were back in sunshine again. Then I noticed the clouds were almost blue, rather than black - a really weird colour sky. I knew something was about to happen, and it was going to be big, so when I saw a gas station I ducked in there and started to put the roof on. But before I could even get the roof bag off the boot rack and unpacked the heavens opened in much the same way that a tropical rainstorm starts in Queensland (like someone has just tipped a bucket over !), but in this case, it was a blizzard - A total white out. So before I could do anything the car inside and out was white !! And I was laughing so hard at the sheer intensity and suddenness of it that I could hardly get my fingers to work to put the roof on !! Anyway, eventually did it, wiped the worst of the snow out of the car, and then jumped in and set off through the snow, still laughing. Could hardly see the road for a moment the snow was so heavy, and then, as quickly as it started, it was gone !
Stopped in Williams Lake and went to McDonalds to get on the internet and try to do some of my blog, and after a while one of the young girls working there came over and asked if that was my car outside and if I was really from Australia, and said that last year at school she had had an exchange teacher at her school from Australia and wondered if I knew him ! Unfortunately she asn;t sure of his name or where he was from ! Anyway, she was so interested in the trip and where I was going, it was lovely talking to her.
The rest of the trip up to Prince George was pretty boring and I kept the roof on because every time I just thought it was fine enough to take it off, we would get another shower !! So I pulled into Prince George at about 5 pm, but it was quite sunny, so I decided to camp, and found a place right beside the main road. While setting up, a guy from the next door motorhome, Brett, came over for a chat, and he and his family were headed north in a rental RV for their holiday. It was cool though, so after setting up the tent and heating up a can of stew in my little stove, I tried to do some of my blog but it was just too cold sitting at the table, and it is too hard to get comfortable sitting up in the tent with nothing to lean against. So once I had got everything sorted out, and got into my warm clothes (they told me it might be minus 2 during the night), I went to sleep as darkness fell at about 9.30 or so.
And while my body was warm in my sleeping bag, now with a liner that is supposed to help it by an extra 10 deg F (so now a 30 Deg F bag instead of a 40 deg F bag), and I had my thermals on as well as pyjamas and my beanie and a pair of socks, I was awoken at about 4.30 am because my feet were frozen. I normally don't get cold feet, so there was something seriously wrong here. What it was I was to find out in the morning !!!
Rest of the pics for the day are here :-
https://picasaweb.google.com/117739775480775657932/VavenbyToPrinceGeorge?authkey=Gv1sRgCMOM3oamo_jXWQ#
