May 16 - to and around Prince George

Beautiful day in British Columbia.  No rain!  I was exhausted last night, so didn't get all the blog updates done.  Slept good and got up this morning to finish.  I was still in my pj's when the owner knocked at 8:15am.  He stood there smoking (and wafting his smoke into my mh) to say they were turning the power off.  That was it.  No advance notice, they just turned it off.  It was fairly cheap place to stay, but I still thought it was tacky.  He had to know the guy was coming to dig up the line that morning and could have put us in a different spot.  They had lots of open ones.  

Fortunately we had a great time riding yesterday and I was in a good mood.  :-)  It was chilly, and I was enjoying the heater (which we had to turn off).  Guess we could have turned the mh furnace on, but it wasn't that cold.  It had gotten up to 50° by 11:00 when we were ready to leave.  The biggest problem we've had with the cold is something under the dash rattles when the mh is idling.  We heard it the first time at Alice Lake, but it did it again this morning.  Fortunately when we get underway, it stops.  David's checked everything he can reach from underneath and doesn't see anything loose.

I thought Woodpecker was a funny name for a rest area.

It was a large rest area set off from the highway.   I am loving traveling and having all my comforts with me.  I took a walk around this area to the high point, but couldn't see much beyond the trees.  I walked past the "facilities" which were well painted and looked nice from the outside but smelled.  I didn't go inside.  It made me smile that I didn't have to rely on a foul smelling pit toilet. 

Road construction is a way of life here.  It is nice to not be in a hurry.  This was a one mile stretch with only one lane available.  It took two turns before we got to go through.  Can you believe how clear the skys are.  The clouds look good enough to eat. 

We only drove 243.5 miles yesterday and 75.4 miles today.  Eighteen days into the trip, 1965.7 miles on the mh and 226.3 miles on the bicycle.  The climbing has been dropping our mileage.  We left the states with a 10.7 average, but the overall average is down to 10.4 now.

We have been picking RV parks that are as close to the city as possible so we can more easily bicycle tour the city.  We started off this city tour with some off road trails.  It was fun, but strenuous riding.  We met three men on the trail that were clearing the fallen trees off the trail.  They were surprised to see a tandem up there.  Things were not well marked, but they did have periodic maps posted.  One of the men made several helpful route hints.   David did a great job finding his way around.

The campground was down and to the left about a mile.  This picture looks so mild, it was a killer climb.  I was wishing we had the Ventana tandem for this ride, but our bike did better than I think the Bike Friday one would.  Think that is scratched from future consideration, even thought they would pack up much easier.

We had a minor mishap getting through the very narrow opening.  It had a heavy cable  between the trees to keep the motorized vehicles out.  The cable tore my handle bar tape.  But the path continued and so did we.

I made David stop so I could get a picture.  I thought the crossed trees were cute.

Usually I can get pictures when we stop.  I don't want to carry the camera where I might sweat on it, so it is in my bottle carrier.  Maybe I worry to much about it, but I worry it won't take the rough handling it would be so easy to dish out.

Just another view of the same "stop and check the map" stop.

We headed down to the local university.  The A-frame windows are skylights for the lower level.

University of Northern British Columbia, UNBC. 

This is the view from the campus level in the previous picture.  The town is way down there and our campground was at a higher elevation than the campus.  There was an "observation point" at the brown structure you can see just above the light pole (white globe).  But when we rode down there, the trees had grown up obscuring the view.  Good idea; poor execution.

We started riding the paved trails around town, but ran into more spring river flooding.

We lost another trail under this bridge to flooding.  It was a challenge, but David found away around. 

Of course it involved walking through a restricted area and over the tracks.

This is where the Nechako River joins the Fraser River. 

Cottonwood Island Park was also closed due to flooding.  We went over the bridge anyway to see how far we could get.

It wasn't very far. 

This was a good rest stop.  I would have liked to stop in for some food, but we had a long climb (close to 3 miles) and I didn't want to carry it.  We had ridden over 20 miles at this point and it wasn't flat.  We are noticing how it stays light so late.  We didn't get back from our 23.7 mile long ride until after 7pm, and we didn't need any lights.