My stepdad, Darrel used to say, “Sometimes you’re the windshield and sometimes you’re the bug!”. Most days we’re the windshield but every now and then things go wrong.
From Prince George, BC, we turned due west onto Highway 16 (aka the Yellowhead Highway) and then north again on Highway 37 (the Cassiar Highway) headed for Boer Mountain and then the town of Smithers.
We passed the town of Vanderhoof and just as the sun broke out from what has been a heavy lid of grey clouds for several days, a logging truck barreling down the two-lane highway in the opposite direction launched a large rock that hit the passenger side windshield just above the wiper. The gunshot-like sound it made scared us all and the walnut-sized impact was so intense that the although it didn’t create a hole all the way through the safety glass, it hit hard enough to dislodge chards of glass from the inside of the windshield. The chards were thrown all over the dashboard and out onto my shirt. I wasn’t wearing my sunglasses because it had been overcast for most of the day and have thought many times since that I was lucky the rock hit the windshield so low that the glass didn’t spray into my eyes or face. The road was in good shape, it was just an unfortunate stray rock.
We were a little shaken, but with a bit of tape inside and out on the windshield, we continued on our way.
With just a few miles left to log that day, it was nice to get to the Kager Lake Recreation and Bike Park.
The camping at Kager Lake is free! Although they do ask for donations that go towards maintaining the bike park. Although there is no electricity or hookups at the campground, there are pit toilets on site for campers.
The bike trails here were engineered by some of the same groups that designed the trails in Whistler so there’s something available for all levels and the campground provides a point of access to all trails. There was a road that allowed people to shuttle bikes up in a car and ride down, but it looked to be a little challenging for the me to drive the RV up and back so Doug road to the top of Boer Mountain on a trail aptly called “Huff and Puff” before enjoying the swoopy decent down “When Pigs Fly”. He rode just over 9 miles and had 1400 ft of climbing, which is pretty impressive on a mountain bike.
All the trail names were pig themed – Pork Cutlet, Little Piglet, Razorback, etc. The next day Doug rode the lake trail with me. It was relatively flat and short at just over 2 miles long. This was a warm-up for Doug, who road back up “Huff and Puff”, down “Charlotte’s Web” and then a lower portion of the bike park to ride “Piglet”, “Pork and Beans” and “Souuweet” before looping again around Kager Lake.
He thoroughly explored this bike park and was happy to have the new mountain bike (versus last year’s gravel bike) to do so. The gravel bike would have been fine in Whistler with some paved rides (like the one that parallels the Sea to Sky Scenic Byway), but it wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun here and very difficult to complete “When Pigs Fly” on the old gravel bike.
After two days at the campground, we were back on the road and broke up the drive with a laundromat stop in Burns Lake, some calls to our insurance company regarding glass replacement as the spider web crack continued to spread; a stop at one of the most scenic Safeway Stores I’ve ever seen in Smithers as it looked out towards a craggy, deep blue mountain range; and some tank filling and dumping in Hazelton.
Continuing north on the Cassiar Highway, about 2 hours later we stopped for a night at the Meziadin Lake Campground.
This small campground is primitive with no hookups, but its well maintained and the lake is absolutely beautiful!
If you’ve been following our travels, you’ve probably noticed that I do most of the trip documentation (i.e. this blog), but Doug has the lion’s share of maintenance, research, and planning, so he deserves a whole lot of credit for keeping us up and running, all of the beauty we get to see, the great places we camp and the activities we do! As you can see, whether in bug or windshield mode, he’s doing an amazing job!
