We made an early start this morning. Eric never unhitched the fifth wheel from the truck yesterday when we arrived, so this saved the time of hitching it up. And everyone got up a little earlier, so we were away at about 8:30am, and we travelled about 500km up to Liard River Hot Springs Provincial Park. (N59 25 39.9, W126 06 23.6) This was the place we were hoping to get to on this trip, and we have finally arrived. The weather was bad today; it rained from morning to night. It is cold and windy, and they are forecasting snow for tonight and tomorrow!
Just south of Liard River, we came across our first wild life, the herd of buffalo that wander up and down grazing on the grass on the side of the road in this area. When we were up here 13 years ago, we saw the same herd just a little to the north of Liard River. At that time there was one buffalo that was separate, a mile or so from the rest of the herd, and they told us that that was Kenworth; he had been hit by a truck and was lame, and was usually on his own. Today, we again saw one lone buffalo separated from the rest of the herd. This picture shows just a small part of the complete herd.
When we arrived, and we backed the motorhome into our campsite, Caleb, who was riding with us in Miss Travelaire, exclaimed "there's a bear!" And sure enough there was a nice black bear right in behind us in our campsite. I opened the door and got out, and as soon as the bear saw me it trotted off into the bush. Then when Sarah was down registering their campsite she mentioned the bear. That set the park rangers scurrying about trying to find the bear. Here I am pointing out to the rangers where we saw the bear and where it went into the bush. I'm sure it was long gone and there was no way they would find it!
The main attraction of this campground is, of course, the hot springs. So off we went (all except Doreen of course) with our bathing suits in tow, and had a really great dip in the springs. There's no better hot springs anywhere!
A thousand foot boardwalk crosses a warm swamp between the campground and the hot springs. This is just one section of it. As you can see, it's been raining, which has been the norm for most of the trip so far.
Here the three boys, Caleb, Eli, and Aaron playing in the little water fall that flows over the dam that they have mid stream. Most of those people in the background are from a group of forrest fire fighters who landed at the hot springs at the same time as us. I guess they don't have anything to do what with the lack of forrest fires this summer!
At one end of the stream the water is so hot you can't go there, and at the other end it is just Luke warm. The main problem with the swim was getting out in a cold rainy day.
We all came back to a hot pot of noodles and veggies that Doreen had cooked up, and Miss Travelaire hosted us all for dinner out of the rain and cold.
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