well look at this beautiful campsite we had last night yes this is in a Walmart parking lot it
is uh definitely not our favorite type of camping but it is free and it serves its purpose sometimes
there's really you know Walmarts are starting to kind of close down their parking lots for
overnight camping but here at Fort St John we went to customer service and we asked and they said yes
and we actually stayed here last year when went up to Alaska they have a sports complex across the
street with ice skating rinks and a pool it's like first class I mean it might have been built for
the olympics or something it's so nice and let's see there's a museum here and kind of some other
things a couple breweries that we hit last night that were pretty good uh other than that we're
gonna head down to Dawson Creek and head further south so I think we'll try and find another
provincial park the one we were thinking about going to last night was actually closed otherwise
we probably would have left town but hey you know what for a quick overnight Walmart will do
holy moly back yeah can't talk I'm so flabbergasted about how awesome this spot
is holy moly batman we were heading down to carp lake was a provincial park there with a campground
and we noticed what looked like a pullout or you know this really cool boondocking spot so
we parked we stopped the truck came back in here there's a fire pit
and uh benches and everything so it looks like a real campsite boondocking spot right
on warhorse lakes now we've been to Deadhorse Whitehorse Bucking horse and now War Horse
this spot is amazing I think we're going to spend an extra day here right honey
and here's Ronda and decided to do a little exploring and come down to carp lake provincial
park so it's actually a pretty well maintained dirt road so I would have no problem bringing
our travel trailer our Escape all the way down here it's absolutely gorgeous really nice lake
lake is huge and we just ran into a local where she's from Vancouver Island but wanted to get away
good fishing here the lake is so big though it can be a little bit choppy but you can take
your boats across and actually tent camp on some of the islands yeah so that's pretty cool yeah
you just pay and reserve here this time of year apparently they don't collect so it's totally free
so if it's open you can come here and camp for free there's also war lake on the way in and then
you know if if it's full for some reason I guess there's some other pull out areas that we saw
that if you were an emergency you could probably stay there yeah but we love our moon docking spot
so we're actually staying there for two nights and we'll go back to there in a minute but I
think we're gonna do a little hike along the way all right we're gonna hit the trail we're gonna go
to war falls a really nice little forested trail it's not very far and supposed to be this raging
waterfall on this volcanic rocks while we're cascading over volcanic rocks that's a nice trail
ah look at this our own private lake and I will say that Carp Lake road
we only had for two nights for two days here we only had maybe a handful of cars maybe eight at
the most passed by on the road right in front of us so it's amazing we had no cell service here
which is kind of nice sometimes like I've said before but yeah pure luck pure pure pure luck this
was not on any app this spot so I did not find this on I Overlander or Allstays or Campendium
and speaking of apps the two that I've been using because we've been offline so much of the time
without cell service is all stays am I Overlander both of those have been working fantastically
offline we are a muddy mess though we will have to do something about that
ready honey we're ready off to the next adventure yeah whatever that is
hey we're in Prince George stretching our legs and we found this cottonwood island
park and there's about a two mile loop around this island
and of course it's named for all the huge cottonwood trees we're on here
so great way to get the dogs a little exercise do something in us yeah because we need it
the cool things about this trail is the hidden carvings so if you look closely
there's all these cool carvings in some of these trees around here and this looks like a dragon
another night another great provincial park last night we were at 10 mile lake provincial park it's
just outside of Quinnell on the north side and a pretty large campground now for 25 Canadian I have
a bit more amenities with this park so there's a dump station here and there's actually showers
and I went to check out the showers they don't even take a loonie so free showers with your
membership there is a problem with the water so we did not fill up our tank here we didn't really
need to anyway but there is a boil order for the water here so we don't want to put that kind of
water in our tank there are some campsites that are kind of along the lake but they're the camp
road is right in front of them so on the map it looks like they're on the lake but you're backing
up to other campsites and you're not quite on the lake but a couple really nice loops and then
there's a whole other section of this campground that's the the touring section
so that'll be for the larger rigs and groups and folks that want the the big pull throughs
so and here comes the camp post so super friendly here really good morning how you doing today how
are you doing good good so that was Kevin really nice nice man who's a park host here uh they are
done with their camp posting here on the 30th of September so just about another week or so
now normally they like to go south of the winter down to Arizona they love quartzite
and unfortunately with the border still being close to uh Canadians it was just announced
yesterday that's going to be closed for a whole other month so he's a bit heartbroken
another night another great campsite and once again we found this awesome spot by chance because
our original idea didn't work out so originally we were going to camp at 100 mile house at their
municipal campground but it was already closed and then we were going to stop at bag p big pie
overlook breezed right past that and then uh so we made our way down to green lake provincial park
and there's two well there's three campgrounds uh we breezed past Arrowhead which is where we're
gonna stay at but the signage was a little funky and we kept on going because there was no place to
turn around and we ended up here at Emerald Bay Campground and look our lake is pretty awesome
so tons of merganzers and some loons out there so lots of great bird life here this lake is
huge the weather has been fantastic which has been a nice a nice plus this place was 18
Canadian a night there's no pay station and they do have a person that comes around that takes your
money so we paid for two nights and so we had a nice day here just chilling out by the lake
um they do have pit toilets and other than that it's all about the lake
so normally this is a reservation campground but because we're in late late September it's
just first come first serve and we want to give a shout out to Kevin and Sherry who are
two campsites over we met them yesterday they are very lovely friendly 17a Escape owners very nice
we decided to stay in Hope not Hope Alaska Hope British Columbia we love Hope the town
very cool they got tons of chainsaw carvings and the Blue Moose coffee is really good
so this campground that we stayed at for the last two nights is called the
Wild Rose it's actually got really good spacing so as you can see from our site we have these
massive hedges on both sides of trees so it makes it feel a little bit more private
uh there are some full-time just people that live here full-time so that sort of kind of
changes the vibe a little bit sometimes of some campgrounds and RV parks so the negatives to this
is the road is right over that way so there is a bunch of highway noise and the airport
is over that way so there is definitely some airplane noise that never bothers me but the
highway noise is definitely pretty noticeable here full hookup site for 45 about 45 dollars a night
the showers here don't cost anything extra but they weren't as hot as I would have liked
and you pay that kind of money you get here and you know there's trash in your fire pit
yeah that's always kind of a gnarly thing you think they come around and go pick up trash
anyways we're all filled back up with water our all tanks are dumped so we are good to go
for another stint of dry camping so we'll be dry camping at least for the next couple weeks hi
we're in hope British Columbia and we're getting ready to do the kettle valley railway trail it's
just over five miles round trip and it's fairly flat wide trail that you can bike or walk on and
it's dog friendly so part of the allure of this old rural railway bed grade is that there's some
tunnels towards the end of it that are supposed to be pretty cool we love big trees (kiss kiss)
no I really don't kiss trees but you know you get the idea
this hike is way cooler than I thought when I said those verbal tunnels I'm like oh okay
but it's right through this uh rock walls it's pretty spectacular so I would definitely
do this hike when you get up to the tunnels it's pretty crowded there's a parking lot I
think on the other side so there's a lot of people hanging out up here that don't do the entire hike
this uh kettle valley railroad was in operation between 1916 and 1959
kids
50 railroad 5-0 50 railroad workers died during the time it was in operation uh that was due to
avalanches, landslides and rock slides and steam engines blowing up and they shoveled like 24 tons
sometimes a day of coal for the steam engine they keep on running pretty crazy this is gorgeous
all right I think I mentioned back there that's really crowded to the tunnels there's a closer
parking lot in this direction and uh way more crowded than I thought it was gonna be but it
was gorgeous so instead of going back through that melee of mass people we're gonna continue
to the end of this trail the one that we're on and then there is I'm using the All Trails app
and then there's a trail that goes off from that probably a little bit longer and then goes back
around so we'll do a circle and then meet back up with the railroad trail that we were originally on
what do I love about being back in the Pacific Northwest big trees land
of the douglas firs big evergreen trees big cedars so awesome and lots of cottonwoods in here
anyway land of big trees I miss that okay now we're gonna get a workout so it's about two
miles the junction of the other trail and we're taking the loop to get away from all the people