Barkerville

Today we drove from Green Lake to Barkerville. Barkerville is the site of the Cariboo Gold Rush which started in 1862. It is now a historical site showing the lives of the gold rush miners.

To get there, we drove through an area with a lot of lakes. The area is famous for fishing in the summer and ice fishing in the winter. The area was beautiful with meadows near the lakes. The towns have names like 70 mile house, 100 mile house, 150 mile house... These were the stops along the wagon route to the gold country. They were the distances from the start of the trail.

Getting to Barkerville took us about an hour out of our way. We will backtrack tomorrow. But this site was listed as a good side quest. Along the way we stopped for lunch at the site of a grave from the gold rush era. Charles Blessing had been murdered. I will let you read the details on the marker because it was just too juicy to leave out.

Unfortunately, we are in the shoulder season. Over the summer, they have actors in period costumes that interact with the visitors. But there were only a few today, a weekday in the shoulder season. There was a blacksmith who was making a bottle opener. There was a sign in his shop saying that he doesn’t make horseshoes. Of course, Amy had to ask. He didn’t give a clear answer, only that horseshoes are a different skill. He apparently doesn’t care to know about horse anatomy.

Next we stopped at the bakery. We split a pastry. When we asked what was good, the shopkeeper suggested their sourdough. We decided to stop on the way back for a loaf of bread.

Greg had taken a bunch of pictures of everything, the town, the blacksmith, the buildings. He started taking a picture in the assayers office when he realized that his memory card was missing. No photos! So, we decided to head back to the vehicle to pick it up. We of course stopped back at the bakery for the sourdough loaf. We got nearly back to the motorhome when it starts to rain. Being good Seattle-ites, we know that we are not water soluble. But the camera might be. We returned with just our camera phones.

We check out the rest of the town, the general store, the candy store (managed to not buy anything!), the Chinese neighborhood with a museum about the Chinese laborers, the stables, basically the rest of the site. As we finished and headed back to our vehicle, the heavens opened up again. It started to hail just as we got back.

Tonight we are staying at a campground run by the city of Barkerville. As we arrived it was still raining. So we waited it out. Then the skies cleared and we were able to get a fire going. It is common in Canada for there to be a fixed fee for unlimited firewood in the campgrounds. So Greg grilled a steak that we brought from Granville Island along with some asparagus from the farm stand in Abbotsford.

The plan was to tour Barkerville tomorrow but we were ahead of schedule and had time today. Tomorrow we are continuing on the drive.