Having finished our time in Whistler, our next main stop is Jasper, which is about 800 odd kilometres away. We decided to split the trip over 2 days with a stop in Sun Peaks, which is about 35 kms off the highway. This seemed like a good halfway point, but in hindsight Kamloops would have made more logistical sense, however Kamloops is currently choked with wildfire smoke so I guess the decision wasn’t such a bad one.
We left Whistler by about 9:15 with the intention of getting some breakfast on the road. This proved to be a poor plan because there weren’t any outlets jumping out at us, not even a ‘Tim Hortons’. There were a couple of opportunities to take photos from view points along the highway, the first being Green Lake and then another looking down the railway line near Wedgewood Mountain.
A little further on, but before and breakfast was available is Nairn Falls. It is a 3 km round trip walk, so needless to say I was getting pretty hungry by the end of that. It’s a popular spot, which is just as well because there had been some bear sightings there in the last few days and once again we could see evidence (scat), but thankfully or not, no bears.
Another half an hour up the road was the town of Pemberton which has a petrol station McDonalds combo. Due our long-held aversion to McDonalds I had a muffin and a black coffee, while Deb had a chocolate milk and a peanut butter cookie. Hardly the the breakfast of champions that we had in mind.
As we headed to Kamloops we had to traverse some mountain ranges. There were times it seemed like we had the road to ourselves and other times it seemed quite busy. We seemed to drive up, only to have to drive down to the next mountain pass as we followed creeks and rivers through the mountains. This scenery was stunning and difficult to do justice to it with a few photos.
Once over this mountain range, we ended up in the Fraser River valley, which is much drier. The forests give was to much more dusty landscapes reminiscent of Central Otago in New Zealand. The smoke haze was starting to build up by this time and the traffic was just a bit more manic, so there weren’t many opportunities to pull over for photos. We will come back through this area later, so stay tuned. As we approached Kamloops the smoke was really thick and the visibility limited, so we just kept driving until arriving at Sun Peaks.
Sun Peaks was created in 2010 as ski resort and has a population of around 1500. It definitely has a feel of a purpose-built town, but with the summer holidays finishing today it was a virtual ghost town tonight, which was kind of nice after the bustle of Whistler. We had some beers at one of the bars with an in-table fireplace, before dinner in the hotel restaurant. Having not really eaten all day, a charcuterie board, some scaloppine and a sticky date pudding hit the mark.
With the smoke haze being so prevalent, sunset wasn’t quite as spectacular as it could have been, but Canada does keep delivering different scenes.
Lastly, on the wildlife sighting front we added 3 more deer today, one swimming across a lake! and 2 squirrels and one chipmunk.
We’ve got another big drive tomorrow to Jasper, but I’ll definitely be having a decent breakfast before we leave. There’s some rain forecast for Jasper, so here’s hoping it clear some of the smoke for us.
Until tomorrow!
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