NORTH TO ALASKA 2025 - DAY 78 - CASSIAR HIGHWAY TO MEZIADIN LAKE PROV PARK, BC

After our muffins and coffee, it was time to leave Kinaskan Park and head on further down the Cassiar Highway.

After 4 or 5 days of rain, we were delighted to see the weather report for the area that we were traveling to saying that the weather was going to clear up, blue skies, and 70°!!! 

That was really going to be a wonderful thing after so many days of rain. We do know further north in the Yukon and up into Alaska, that there is a lot of rain in August. Anywhere along the whole shoreline of the ocean is kind of a rainforest terrain to begin with. But during July we still expected to have some nice weather while we were traveling southward.

We hit the road and started enjoying the landscape as it flew on past the windows. We are liking the variety of trees of different pines and firs and spruces. Once we had come through that Gnat's Pass, we noticed a difference in all of the tree species. They were more like what we are used to seeing in the lower 48 states, rather than just the tall lodgepole skinny pines of the North.

There were still some clouds and misty haze burning off up high. But we could feel the temperatures increasing from the low 40s, bit by bit, up into the higher '50s. Maybe the weathermen were right after all?

We drove along for about an hour and decided to pull off a bit to refill our coffee cups and make a quick breakfast sandwich. We cook up either sausage patties or fry some ham, scramble up some eggs in little round fry pans, and toast English muffins. We make them just like an Egg McMuffin sandwich or a Jimmy Dean Sandwich. But we make them ourselves from our own ingredients. A very handy breakfast to make to get back on the road again. 

We saw this turbulent water crashing through this canyon around underneath the bridge.  

It's hard to tell by a photo, but the crashing water was just roaring past. If you watch the video link below on YouTube, you will see the section that I filmed of this part of the road. It was amazing to see the strength of Mother Nature after all of the rain during the last 4 or 5 days.  Just about every river we have seen now is full to the brim or overflowing it's banks.

We drove along further south, and encountered two of these interesting looking wooden bridges. I am assuming that they are checked and monitored for drivability. We scooted across in our motorhome while we held our breath.

I'm not so sure with our older, bigger motorhome how we would have felt crossing them. But the amount of logging trucks and semi trucks we see on this road, it has to be okay?

We stopped along another side roaring river to let a semi pass. It was a good time to get Nick out and about to do his "thing". We didn't get too close to the edge of the riverbank with the motorhome. The pull off looked muddy. And with all of the extra rain that has been landing in the area, the last thing we want to do is be stuck in mud. So we parked as far away as we could but still walked over to check it out. Again the roaring blasting river was just mind-boggling. You certainly didn't want to fall in because you probably couldn't get back out!

It was so turbulent it had white water waves crashing against the rocks and the shoreline. Quite awe-inspiring.

On the other side of the road was a huge rock cliff. It made a pretty backdrop for our motorhome. I suppose at one time the river had been so wide that it had eroded the earth away from these rocks too.

By early afternoon, we were very pleased to see the sky was clearing up! We actually could see patches of blue sky, dotted with puffy white clouds. The temperatures were back up in the '70s, just like the weatherman promised.

I aimed my cell phone up in the air and it compensated for the brightness of the sky and really illuminated the blue portions. I did not enhance this in any way, but the cell phone did it itself. Kind of cool, huh?

We had already been driving for a couple of hours. Our plan was to get close to this junction where 37A cuts off over to Stewart and Hyder. We knew there was a provincial park right by the junction. We stopped at the corner at a large log building called Meziadin Gas Bar and Camp. It was a series of log buildings that doubled as a hotel, hostel, RV wash as well as a convenience store, gas and propane. We filled up our propane tank here because we had not been able to further back at the start of the Cassiar Highway and we are getting quite low. We never want it to get down near empty, because any icky junk at the bottom of the tank may get sucked into our lines. Just like fuel. Never let your gas or your diesel run down to the bottom in your vehicle. 

After filling things up, we ignored the turn off of 37A and went another mile or so further to Meziadin Provincial Park. (A on the map is Meziadin Lake, Stewart and Hyder are B)

Here's the link for the park for more information:

https://bcparks.ca/meziadin-lake-park/

We pulled in. At first in the upper loop it was just rows of open campsites in a gravel parking lot. That didn't impress us too much. But I think those are for touring groups of RV caravans that can pull in quickly overnight, and depart without intruding on the rest of the campground. 

We went down further down into the campground, closer to the lakeshore. My oh my! This was soooooo pretty!!! 

The first open site I saw was right next to the boat landing. That's the one that I wanted. We did drive through the entire loop to look at the rest. Some of the sites are electrical down on the point but they are in a large group kind of in a cul-de-sac. We didn't want that. We went back to the site I saw by the boat landing and took that for the night. What a wonderful site it was!

The turnoff was just a short distance away from the Junction. Tomorrow the route called 37A around the northern part of the lake is what we are taking to get to Stewart, BC and Hyder, AK. That is only 40 miles away.

The lake is very large, but where the campground is situated, there is an island that kind of blocks any of the heavy winds blasting across the lake from the west. It is protected and calm, and a really great place to have a campground.  The yellow arrow is pointing to our campsite.

The water was beautiful and calm. We had our own little rocky shoreline with this big old driftwood log at the edge. We saw little frogs, and every now and then we could hear a fish jump.

On one side of us was the boat landing, but there was nobody there. On the other side there was another camper but it was quite a ways away. We felt like we were in our little private area again. How do we keep finding these beautiful campsites? Maybe because there are so many of them, or maybe it's just the luck of the draw, who knows.

Again, I had a gorgeous view from inside while I was getting supper going. It's so easy to perform something as routine and mundane as cooking supper when you have a view like this. I whipped up some beef enchiladas and had them in the oven while Steve was putting out our lawn chairs and getting ready to build a campfire.

We had put out the back slide for our bedroom area. The queen mattress folds in half forward, like a taco, when the slide is in. When it's out, we have a full queen size bed that we can walk on each side of. Some other models of the Winnebago Views have just a bed in the corner that stays down all of the time. In that one, the inside person has to crawl over the outside person or shimmy down to the end to get out of bed if the other one is still asleep. That's why we really like this floor plan better. 

The quilt is one that I had made in the fall before we left, in preparation for this trip, is perfect on the bed. We have a blanket underneath for the cold nights. The pattern is called Winter Solstice, by Patty Carey. I happened to finish it up on the actual Winter Solstice date in December. The tag on the underside reads "North to Alaska 2025". I think it looks so nice with the little matching pillows.

Because we were backed up so far in the campsite to the lake, it was like having the lake all around on all three sides as we looked out the windows of the bedroom. What a beautiful view!

Can you imagine waking up, pulling up the window shade, and seeing this?

Steve got out the lawn chairs while I was finishing up the dishes after dinner. He was relaxing and enjoying the beautiful view, after a really nice day of driving. Since we've switched to the Cassiar Highway to go home, it's been so relaxing and comfortable. We are really glad we are now avoiding the rugged roads of The Alcan and especially Destruction Bay.

We are now almost at 7,000 miles of our travels in 3 months.  It might be nice to slow down a little bit and enjoy the milder road conditions. 

We could see the people across on the other point, in the electrical sites. Most of them were fishermen with their boats tied up nearby. Everyone was quiet. When the attendant came around to collect our money, he said that they rarely have any problem with rowdy people. It's a very quiet lake, usually with retirees and fishermen occupying the sites. They do have a prevalent bear problem, so tents or soft-sided camping trailers are not allowed. Only hard-sided and you still were warned to be careful with your food storage, and not to leave anything out in your campsite that would attract the bears.

Every once in awhile we saw a small fishing boat go out around the island. It is really nice that it shelters this cove or lagoon a little bit from the wind. 

The greens were soooo vivid green, in the blues have that turquoise color to it from glacial runoff. I do nothing to enhance my photos, these are all original, straight from the camera. Sometimes I open them up and straighten out a horizon or a lakeshore more horizontally. Other times I may crop out the sides of the photo that aren't interesting or get rid of the side view mirror as we are moving down the road. But I really do nothing else to enhance my photos.  This is REALLY what it looked like.

I enjoyed the reflections of the overhead sun flickering back on the ripples to create some beautiful lighting. 

The random weeds along the shoreline created an interesting foreground to the beautiful waters in the background.

Most of the clouds have now moved away and the water was reflecting the beautiful blue sky. If I painted a picture like this, nobody would think those were the true colors that we were actually seeing.

I took a walk around the campground a little bit with the dog. He enjoyed getting out to sniff a bit. I snapped this picture on the way back. How pleasant that looks nestled in against the lake in the background.  With Steve still relaxing in his lawn chair, all I could see was serenity and peace.

These are the types of things that I want to remember from our trip. As things are winding down, I want to hang on to the precious memories and try to capture them with film or photo.

Even something as silly as looking at the beauty of this moss covered rock that was located right outside of our camper door. There are amazing artistic natural displays by Mother Nature everywhere.

Steve said after dinner, perhaps we would like to relax with a campfire. 

Things were calm and with all the recent rain they had, the ranger said that it was fine to start a campfire.  My Brawny Lumberjack man started chopping up some of the dry firewood that we had purchased at the crossroads store.  It wasn't a lot, but it would make a cheery little fire to sit by for the evening.

This campground also had the same pretty tables that the previous one had at Kinaskan Lake. It takes a while for the rain to dry off the beaded up surface of rain on the varnish, but they are still absolutely beautiful tables. 

Steve pulled out his little magic box of "fire starts" from Duraflame.  They are small packages that you only need one to light up, and stick it in a little bundle of kindling in the campfire pit. Within 5-10 minutes you have a beautiful fire!

See??  So much better than lighter fluid, or tiki torch fluid that Steve used to use, or heaven forbid, gasoline like we see some people do. These little teeny blocks and some dry kindling are all you need to have a fire going in no time.

Steve added more firewood over time, and soon there was a good bed of coals. Absolutely perfect for roasting marshmallows.

I got out the graham crackers and the Hershey bars, and did the setups for S'mores. What a pleasant dessert after a long day.

Steve roasted the marshmallows to perfection, with a beautiful golden brown crust and didn't allow them to ignite into flames. I know some people like them burned black. But I like the golden crust with the perfectly melted marshmallow inside. I told him this was as pretty as a picture in a magazine or a recipe book!

Nick doesn't get any of the chocolate, and the marshmallow would stick in his fur. But I did give him a little corner piece of graham cracker. He seems a little indignant about that??? 

So I picked him up and cuddled him for a while as we watched the sunset. Slowly evening came upon us and the gentle darkness crept in across the lake.  It sure had been a nice day.

We toddled off to bed, in this peaceful campground with no noise and slept soundly alongside of the lake.

I guess we really have to consider ourselves as being fortunate to travel this way. 

I can't imagine being on a noisy cruise ship going up and back to Alaska. Or riding in a fast jet and dealing with crazy people in the big cities or airports or trying to arrange transportation and lodging. Staying in hotels with people up and down the hallways, thumping above you, taking loud below you, or banging doors and making noise? No thank you. 

I will gladly trade that all for a peaceful night alongside of a mountain lake, with our dog curled up on the floor next to us. Our own bed (and quilt) our own bathroom, our own food in our own refrigerator with our own kitchen. Priceless. 

~~~~~

The next morning, Steve opened the window shade and all I could see was the bright reflection of the water making ripples and designs on the ceiling over our bed. How cool was that?

I grabbed the camera and slid open the bedroom window and snapped this picture of the shoreline where the light was coming from. 

It's another beautiful day!!!!

There wasn't any wind at all, and the lake was like glass. Look at the reflection of the trees onto the water with the blue sky overhead? 

If I tried to paint this, 

you would never believe it was real.

But this is a photo out of my camera, 

It is real! 

We got up slowly and enjoyed the morning. Steve made our pour-over coffee and we relaxed in front of this beautiful scenery as the sun went higher and higher in the sky. It was going to be a great day!

Here is the video that goes along with today's blog:

Now we are going to travel on the Glacier Highway into Stewart and Hyder... Adventure awaits!

133 miles traveled today 

6,723 miles traveled so far