A Waterfall in 100 Mile House, and a Heritage Site at 108 Mile House [260611]

(Posted 260618) The fact has not escaped us that this is the third blog post in a row to have a waterfall as the cover photo - but we really like visiting waterfalls. 😉

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Our night on Mt. Begbie was one of the quieter ones in recent memory, since the parking lot was set back a bit from the highway and we had no neighbors to disturb us.  Still, we were up around 8 and on the road by 9 on Thursday morning.

A few minutes after getting back on the highway, a bald eagle took flight from one of the trees right by the side of the road and flew off into the sky.  Unfortunately it happened much too fast to get a photo of, but we're counting it as our first "real" wildlife sighting in Canada.

As you may recall from the previous blog, we were headed to the municipality of 100 Mile House next, with our first stop being in Centennial Park 15 km up the road.  The park is interesting because, being in a residential area it has all the things you might expect to find in a city park: playground, tennis courts, sports, fields, etc. - but also a pretty nice waterfall, which is what we were there to see.

The falls were about 1/4 mile up a pretty little forested path that ran along the river.

The trail continued up to the top of the falls (and beyond, but "top of the falls" was as far as we went).

After the waterfall we decided to extend our hike by visiting the restroom by the park playground.  The playground was deserted, but had a water play area that seemed to be activated by an electronic push button - that Tom couldn't resist pushing.  The water features were really quite impressive with lots of different types of sprayers and jets, and even a bucket that filled and dumped every minute or so.

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Our other reason for visiting 100 Mile House was that they reportedly had a free dump and water fill station, and our plan was to dump our gray tank and refill our freshwater tank (and drinking water bottles, which were pretty low by now), park somewhere to take showers (having pre-heated water during our morning hike) and wash our backlog of dirty dishes, and then dump all our waste tanks and refill freshwater again.  We were a little taken aback by the fact that the potable water had an unthreaded connector on it, making it incompatible with our fill system - which by itself wouldn't necessarily be a problem, because "we carry adapters for that sort of thing now" - and there was a sign that mentioned not modifying the nozzle.  But in the end, we decided that the gist of the sign was that the facilities were for RV use only (which was us) and that residents shouldn't be using it to fill bulk containers to bypass buying municipal water, and went ahead with our plan anyway.  But it was slow and annoying to have to use the adapter, since it's silicone and has to have the pressure/flow regulated/throttled manually and carefully or it'll burst (and also tends to slip off nozzles like this one very easily, despite being clamped).

The dump station was fairly busy when we first arrived to do the initial dump and fill.  But we had a clear view of it when parked in the shopping center across the street for the shower and dishwashing stage, and it was considerably less busy (i.e. empty most of the time) while we were sitting there.  But we eventually got everything done.

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Our next stop was 15 km up the road at the 108 Mile House Heritage Site.  Some of the historic buildings are native to the 108 Mile Ranch area, while others were moved here.  We entered, taking note of the warning sign to watch out for gopher holes.

We started our tour at the museum in the center of the site, which was a good thing since that's where you happen to pick up the guide to the buildings.  The museum is housed in the old 105 Mile Roadhouse, which was built in 1905 three miles south to accommodate miners traveling along the gold rush trail.  Seven years later it was converted to a ranch house, and changed hands through multiple ranching families, and eventually donated to the Historic Society.  It was moved to its current location in the winter of 1979-80.  There's a small gift shop in the back, but most of the rooms are dressed decked out with period artifacts.

The buildings below are (from left to right) the Posthouse, the Bunkhouse, and the old General Store / Telegraph Office.

The Posthouse was built in 1892 using deconstructed timer from the old 108 Mile Roadhouse, which had developed a reputation as the "108 Murder Hotel" due to the nefarious activities of Agnes MacVee, who ran the hotel during this time.  Legend has it folks have seen MacVee's historical murder victims gazing out the windows of the Posthouse in modern times.  The door was locked the day we were there, but we peeked in the windows from the outside and didn't see anything out of the ordinary (other than an odd mix of old historic looking furniture mixed in with what looked like Greenmade storage bins from Costco).

In the old General Store / Telegraph Office were some very old wet cell batteries, that we're pretty sure were very, very, dead.

Whoever set up the Bunkhouse display obviously had a sense of humor.  The beds didn't look very comfortable to us, though.

On the other side of the museum was the BX Barn (part of the Bernard Express pioneer transport company; one could rent horses with or without wagons from a BX Barn down south, and then stop at the various BX Barns as they traveled north to swap for fresh horses along the way), a reproduction of the original blacksmith shop, the Schoolhouse, the Chapel, a building with logging equipment, and the Clydesdale Barn.

Here's a better angle on the Chapel and the Schoolhouse, as well as the interiors of both.  The Schoolhouse was built at 133 Mile House in 1938 and operated until 1956; it was moved to its current location in 2000.  The Chapel was built in 2000 by the Historical Society, and is "a modern representation of a turn of the century Anglican Church, and contains antiques from the early 1900's".

The Trapper's Cabin was built in the 1930's at Hawkins Creek, and moved to its current location in 1999.

It wasn't until we got to the very far end of the site that the incessant "cheep cheep cheep" from this guy gave his position away - and we finally started seeing a few gopher holes.

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Our next planned stop was at the Williams Lake Visitor Center 75 km northwest.  However, we got a little delayed by some repaving work along the way (what will probably the first of many road construction delays for this trip, from what we've heard).

The Williams Lake Visitor Center was kind of attractive from the outside, but kind of a dud overall - mostly just a gift shop and a for-pay museum that we weren't interested in seeing; not even a water fountain to go with the restrooms (although that is not unusual for BC, apparently).  We were curious, so we try asking the young man at the Visitor Information desk what the origin of the "100 Mile House, 105 Mile House, etc." naming convention for towns around here was - figuring that even if it's not something taught in Canadian schools, surely the folks who live and work in the area would know.  Apparently not, because he didn't.  He was nice about it, though, and went to ask his manager - who also had no idea.  So apparently it's not "common knowledge" in these parts.  We asked the AI later, who said:

These town names originated during the Cariboo Gold Rush of the 1860s. They indicate the distance in miles a specific stopping house (or roadhouse) was located from Lillooet, which was designated as Mile 0 on the historic Cariboo Wagon Road.

Another 115 km north brought us to our stopping place for the next two nights: the Walmart in Quesnel.  After getting permission from Customer Service to stay, we did some grocery shopping - being careful to leave some items to buy the next day as well, since we'd be staying for two nights.  The selection here was better than in Abbotsford, but they still didn't have our missing items so it looks like we'll have to work around them, at least until we get out of Canada.  On the plus side:  Tom has been getting a little tired of tinned fish variations and managed to find a good deal on some Great Value Smoked Sausages to add to his boondocking meal rotation. 

Back in the T42, we were unable to pull in the Walmart Wi-Fi with our repeater (which works in about 80% of our Walmart stays), but for a while it looked like we might be able to pull in the Wi-Fi from the Popeye's behind us.  Eventually, though, we had to fall back to the Starlink - which tonight wanted to be pointed due south instead of due north like it always has in the past; we're guessing that we crossed over some longitudinal line that the Starlink satellites orbit in today, and we'll be pointing our dish south from now until we cross back over it on our return trip in a few months. 

After dinner (smoked sausages and rice for Tom; frozen raviolis for Christine; shared canned green beans) we had an item on our "local delicacy" list - purchased earlier in the evening - for desert: a Coffee Crisp candy bar.

We'd describe it as "kind of like a giant, coffee flavored Kit Kat bar".  It was okay, but we don't feel the need to buy another.

Tom published blog post 4, updated his journal, and spent the rest of the night working on blog post 5 while Christine did trip planning until bedtime.

Tomorrow we'd be seeing the sights of Quesnel.