Bridges, and Chasms, and Lookouts - Oh My! [260610]

(Posted 260615) Wednesday was slated to be a "travel day", with stops at some interesting points of interest along the way to break up the drive.

-----

Tom had one of his "wake up early with his brain spinning" mornings, with today's issue being how to elevate the Wi-Fi repeater's new Dollar Tree cake-server-rain-shield on the roof so that the repeater's antenna is high enough to "see over" the roof rack bar.  He finally determined that a frame made of chloroplast might be the best solution - but all of our scrap chloroplast is in the shed at home.  Maybe we could find some cheap chloroplast somewhere in Canada . . .

We were up by 8 a.m. on Wednesday and after our morning routine (plus tire pressure check) we were ready to leave by 9 a.m.  We headed north into the Fraser River Canyon, to our first stop 48 km up the road:  the Alexandra Bridge Provincial Park.  We took the marked trail to the bridge (which, again, had a length measured in minutes instead of miles or kilometers) . . .

. . . which snaked through the forest for a bit, before appearing to merge with a dirt road which we continued to follow downward.  But we got very confused when the road became blocked (to vehicles) by a row of boulders, followed by a gate with a sign on it that seemed to be indicating that we should NOT be crossing it.  On the other side of the gate was a railroad track, which we could tell from the sounds of a train in the distance was an active track.

Had we taken a wrong turn somewhere and gotten off the intended path?  Rather than risk it, we backtracked our way back up to the hill to see if there was an actual trail map up top somewhere.  We eventually found one, but comparing their map to a Google Map it certainly looked like we were in the right place before.  However, their map had a brown bar marked "underpass" at the railroad crossing - so maybe there was an underpass for the railroad somewhere that we had just missed somehow?

We returned to where we were before, tracking our progress on the Google Map this time.  The gate was most certainly the crossing point marked on their map, and there most certainly was no underpass there!  We could see a path on the far side of the tracks, though, so we just walked across the tracks like we apparently should have the first time 🙄.

The bridge itself was just a (comparatively) short bit further.

This historic bridge was the replacement for the original gold-rush era bridge that was previously built on this spot.  The original was built in 1863 and was finally dismantled in 1912, after years of deterioration.  This second iteration was built in 1926 and was decommissioned in 1964.  Although it is better constructed than the original, it is still of the design that Tom doesn't like (with the steel grate floor that you can see - and drop things - through), and the concrete in sections has deteriorated (although there is a preservation/restoration plan underway).

We crossed to the other side anyway.

From the far end, you could see the new/current Alexandria Bridge that we had driven over to get here.

-----

Our tentative plan had us stopping at the Hells Gate Airtram about 18 km north to see the fishway accessible from there.  But that plan turned out to be fairly problematic because you can't make a left turn into the parking lot when heading northbound; instead you have to overshoot by several kilometers to a "turnaround" area and come back south to enter parking lot.  You similarly have to turn right when exiting and head many kilometers south before you have a chance to turn around and head north again.  On top of that, the trail to to the fishway sounded like it potentially involved a 600' elevation change - which in the end all sounded like an awful lot of trouble to see a fishway when the fish weren't running anyway.  We decided to skip Hells Gate - but stopped at the "turnaround" anyway to see the waterfall accessible from there.

On the walk out to the falls we passed by this somewhat unique tree-supporting-tree situation.

There was no dry ground leading all the way up to the base of the falls, so we stopped at "the end of the road" for photos, before deciding whether we wanted to try stepping over/on wet rocks to try to get to the base.

The water wasn't running that fast, and there seemed to be enough dry stable-ish rocks to walk on, so we decided to go for it.

-----

We stopped at the Rest Area in Lytton, 87 km to the north, for lunch.  "Rest areas" in British Columbia have been wildly variable, with some being just pullouts with garbage cans.  This one was one of the nicer ones, with a reasonably large parking area, vault toilets (we haven't seen a single one with running water yet), picnic tables, and even a number of interpretive and informational signs.

It's was also Tom's first lunch using the Canadian Walmart "Great Value lunch meat alternative".  We had bought both the "Smoked Turkey Breast" and - for fun - the "Oven Roasted Herbed Turkey Breast", and Tom decided to start with the latter.  He was not a fan.  The turkey was very fennel-seed-flavor forward - even the parts with no visible herbs in it, almost like it had been brined in a fennel-seed solution.  Hopefully the smoked turkey breast would be more normal tasting, but it will take a few days to get through the herbed turkey before he could find out.

Lytton is where we left the Fraser River behind and started following the Thompson River Valley northward.

We passed this rental RV along the way.  We guess we should get used to seeing "Cruise Canada" RVs now, instead of the usual "Cruise America" ones?

For years, Tom joked that he was going to open a restaurant called the "Roadkill Cafe", with food cooked on grills and with meat presses embossed with tire tread patterns on them.  Then we saw signs for this place, and were somewhat tempted to check it out...

We had seen several signs warning that were driving through "wildlife corridors", but so far this is the only bear we've seen.

146 km north of Lytton we reached our next point of interest:  The Chasm.  To be honest, though, we were a little underwhelmed; maybe we're just a little jaded from our explorations through Arizona and Nevada, but the description in the Milepost had us expecting far more colors exposed in the chasm walls.

This little guy scared the crap out of Tom by sneaking up behind us from out of nowhere and nuzzling Tom's hand with his wet nose.  He followed us around - trying to look cute - while we took our photos, and seemed genuinely surprised when we finally left without petting him or giving him any treats (which we're guessing is what he's used to happening).  He has a collar and tag, so we figure he probably belongs to one of the houses we saw on the drive in or out; most are on one or more acres of land, and few have fences around them.

-----

Another 33 km up the road us brought us to the final point of interest for the day: Mt. Begbie to see the view from the fire lookout there.  From the "upper lot" where we parked, it's about a 0.5 mile walk (with about 170 feet of elevation gain) along a rutted (and today, somewhat muddy) access road to the fire lookout.

We were a little surprised to find that the door to the interior of the fire lookout was unlocked, but the room itself is now empty - with the exception of a few interpretive signs on two edges.

From the deck outside, we could "see almost all of the Cariboo".

At this point, we had two options: stay here for the night, or continue on to 100 Mile House, do the planned activities there, and then stay at a rest area on the far side.  But the reviews for that rest area described it as non-level and noisy - and the lots here on Mt. Begbie seemed reasonably level and quiet, so we decided to just stay here for the night.

We decided to move to the larger "lower lot", though, and managed to find a spot along the side such that the T42 was pointed due north, and the Starlink could be placed flat on the dash and still have "perfect alignment".

A few trucks passed through staying for a bit making us think that we might have company, but in the end it was just us for the night.  After dinner (rice and tinned oysters for Tom; Madras lentils and rice for Christine; shared microwaved frozen peas for both) Tom wrote the fourth blog post while Christine worked on trip planning.  We headed to bed at around 10:45.