DAY 12 OF OUR ALASKAN ADVENTURES

We're still in Quesnel, BC at Randy and Chris Davis' and will be here until tomorrow. The weather here this morning was a little colder than yesterday when we got up. It was 27° (-3C) and today it's 23 (-5C). It was a little warmer in the RV because we turned the heat up a few degrees last night but we're going thru a tank of propane every 2-3 days.
Bob's been trying to figure out how to do a slide show on the blog to display pictures but no luck yet. I decided to go out for my morning walk and saw several deer eating in people's yards.
Yesterday Randy and Chris took us to historic Barkerville. It's a late 1800's gold town that has been restored for tourism. It's not open for the season yet but people are there getting it ready so we were able to walk through and take pictures. It is a fascinating area and would have been wonderful to tour under different circumstances. As you can see, however, it was a little difficult maneuvering around the snow banks and the mud in the streets. During the summer, the employees are dressed in period costumes of the gold rush days of the 1800's. Barkerville was the largest town north of San Francisco and West of Chicago in it'd hayday. It was named for Billy Barker, who struck gold on Williams Creek. The resulting gold rush, in 1862 created Barkerville. As you can see spring, has not quite reached Barkerville. As we were getting ready to wrap up our tour, it started to snow so we quickly headed back to the van. We passed through Wells on the way to Barkerville and stopped on the way back to Quesnel for lunch at a quaint cafe in a restored old hotel. There was a much appreciated fire blazing in the wood stove in the living room area that we all cuddled up to for a few minutes before going in for lunch. There are historical markers all along the road up to Barkerville with history of the difficulties that the miners and loggers endured while trying to make a fortune gold panning or logging. We also saw many signs along the road warning to look out for deer, moose, & cariboo. We did see a small herd of about 6-8 cariboo but they escaped into the woods before we could stop and take a picture. What a beautiful ride and we really appreciated Chris and Randy taking the time to show us some of the remarkable B.C. area. Randy was a banker here for years so he has a wealth of knowledge about the area and proved to be a great tour guide. On the way back to Chris and Randy's house, we toured the town of Quesnel. Quesnel is located at the confluence of the Fraser and Quesnel rivers and began as a supply town for miners during the Cariboo Gold Rush in the 1860's. Today, forestry is the main industry and there are 2 pulp mills, a plywood plant and 5 saw mills, a planer mill and an MDF plant. It would be interesting to tour some of these plants. Of course, we had to stop to get a picture of Bob near the giant gold pan at the entrance to Quesnel. If you could only find a gold nugget that size when we get to Alaska!!!