Muncho Lake Area

Monday, August 23 - Today was a great day!  Fog had drifted in overnight and our campground was beautiful in the misty, early-morning light.

I walked down by the highway to get a couple pictures, and the highway was really socked in.  We weren't leaving for a couple hours, so I hoped it would clear by then.  David had us on the move this morning, with a 9:00 scheduled start.

I walked over toward the Hot Springs, and the marshes were really foggy.  I was looking for moose (or anything else that moved), but didn't see anything.

So about 5 minutes before 9:00, David started hollering on the CB that it was time to go.  We headed out, still foggy right a the intersection of the campground and highway (maybe the hot springs always creates fog in this area), and within our first mile we came to the Liard River Bridge, the only remaining suspension bridge (1143 ft.) on the Alaska Highway, built in 1943.  It was being worked on, as were many of the bridges in Canada, so we had to stop.

We got the green light and pulled onto the bridge, and there was a guy driving a bobcat tractor heading toward the other end.  Suddenly, he comes flying back toward us.  I said to Joe, is he going to stop?

He stopped right in front of us and got off, yelling "back up, back up, you have to back up, there's buffalo coming across the bridge!"  He was very excited.  Joe told him we couldn't back up, we had a tow vehicle on behind.  I guess this construction worker had not run into this problem before because it took a while to convince him.  Another guy was trying to get David and Collins backed up.  Collins was barely on the bridge, and he did back up just a little.  Marilyn got in the dinghy and tried to keep it from jack-knifing.  So our guy turned his bobcat a little sideways, right against our RV, so the buffalo wouldn't damage it, and the two construction guys looked for a safe place for themselves.  And here comes the buffalo.

They herded the buffalo into the other lane and he ran right beside us!

I think the construction guys actually thought a whole herd was coming, but only one came across.  We came through that adventure unscathed, but it was quite an exciting start to our day. Mazie said she kept tooting the horn at it, I guess so it wouldn't ram their Dodge, but none of us had any problem with it. Just a little ways down the road, maybe a couple miles, we came upon a small herd of about 20 buffalo, some still bedded down.

We could see there was a larger herd just a few hundred feed further, so after several pictures there, we eased on down to take pictures of these.  I counted 64 in this group, and probably missed some that were in the trees.  There were several babies in this group.

Finally we moved on, and this was one of the prettiest drives we've had, and believe me, we've been on some pretty drives.  Joe drove about 35 mph most of the day so he could take in the views as he drove (and most of the time, he was in the correct lane).  We are back in the Canadian Rockies now, and they are breath-taking.

We stopped at Muncho Lake, one of Mazie's favorite spots from their trip in 1999.  And it was certainly beautiful. The lake is 7 miles long and a mile wide, and very clear. The water is such a pretty emerald color, and the lake reflects the mountains and clouds around it.

After we loaded up from there, we came upon our first caribou, a small group of 4 (unfortunately, there was a dead one alongside the road, but it didn't look like this morning's kill).

We saw two more caribou later on, but we didn't get a picture of them.
We crossed Toad River, another pretty emerald-colored river, and later saw 3 small grouse on the side of the road.  We thought David hit one of them, but he said he straddled it and it survived.

Our lunch stop was beside "folded mountain," mountains with flat-lying layers buckled like folds, caused when the continent of North America began to move westward 175 million years ago.

The afternoon scenery was as good as this morning's.

There are lots of wildlife in British Columbia, so we were looking for everything and anything.  We finally came upon a small herd of stone sheep, licking the minerals out of the gravel at a pull-off (very convenient for us).  There was a little one that was so cute I just wanted to pet it (Kaylee, you would have like this one).

We passed another beautiful lake, Summit Lake.

And finally got to our campground, another provincial park, at Testa River.  We had a beautiful drive of 132 miles today, and saw lots of buffalo, some caribou, and some stone sheep.  A good day!!!