A Drive Along The Cariboo Mountains
August 22, 2016 3:01 pm Leave your thoughts
I’ve been signing up for overtime a lot the last month. I usually work it but I signed up this weekend and they didn’t have anything for me. So instead, I thought I would take the opportunity to go for a hike this morning at one of my favourite spots, Narcosli Creek. I told my mom last night that I was going to go, but she didn’t like the idea of me going by myself. She said that her and my step-dad were thinking about going for a drive on the backroad to Likely, so I decided to go with them instead, and I’m very glad I did.
We went east along Highway 26 towards Barkerville and the Bowron Lakes. Then instead of turning north to Bowron we went south on the 3100 road. We first stopped along the Cariboo River. The water was so green and there were a few people fishing. There were also some really big cedar and hemlock trees. These trees are more commonly found near the coast but there’s sort of a pocket of them all along the west side of the Cariboo Mountains where the climate is a lot more temperate and wet than it is in the interior valley.
Our next stop was at an abandoned resort called Comet Creek. There were some nice mountain views, I didn’t realise how close they actually are to Quesnel because you can’t see them from here. There was a little waterfall and a creek and a few cabins that really reminded me of Hagrid’s hut in Harry Potter.
We drove on a bit until we got to a creek near Ghost Lake. We didn’t see any ghosts but there were a lot of bugs up there; some really big june bugs that like to sneak up on you. We drove by a waterfall and then went down the creek a little to have some snacks and try a little bit of fishing. One took my bait but I wasn’t trying very hard to catch it. Then I got my line caught in some rocks and had to walk in the creek to get it. It felt like walking into snow with bare legs. It was a really pretty creek but had really really cold water.
After we left the creek off Ghost Lake we kept driving and occasionally stopped to look at the spectacular mountain views; one even had a glacier.
As we started to drive away from the mountains we passed along Cariboo Lake. The Cariboo river flows from the Bowron Lakes Chain then to Cariboo Lake, which turns into the Quesnel River, which flows through Quesnel and into the Fraser River. This is pretty much the path we followed for most of our drive. I didn’t take any pictures of Cariboo Lake because there was a lot of thick bush along it. There were also a lot of cows on the road.
We made it Likely around 4pm. We left our house at 10am and stopped a few times, so the drive wasn’t actually too long. Likely is on the Western tip of Quesnel Lake, which I really wanted to drive down. It’s the deepest known fjord lake in the world and being the something-est of anything in the world is pretty cool. Sadly, my parents didn’t want to because they were getting tired and were ready to go home.
So, we said goodbye to Likely and headed west towards McLeese Lake which is about 30 minutes south of Quesnel. It turns out I was ready to go home too; I was pretty tired. We stopped at a restaurant for dinner and made it home just in time before it started pouring rain. Maybe some other time I’ll be able to see the rest of Quesnel Lake, but after all that driving and sightseeing I might have to have a nap.
