Fraser Canyon

Sunday June 29th

Surprise for us all. While we were out yesterday, Greg went and hired a 7 seater car so he could take us all out for a day. That meant the other 6 got a seat each and I got a seat of my own.

We set out about 9.30am and Greg would not tell us where we were going. It was a mystery tour. Cody had his phone and was busy ringing up somewhere to check if the place we were going was open. ALan was allowed a map, but Cody was incharge of directions using GPS. We went through a lot of countryside and headed into the Cascade mountains and into the Pacific range. These were huge mountains, all covered in trees, with some still covered in snow. The mystery trip included a big gorge, like the Manawatu Gorge but on a much bigger scale. We went through a little town called Hope, and Kathleen announced that we were now beyond Hope.

Cody's excellent navigation had us end up at Hell's Gate. This is a huge canyon on the Fraser river.

Air trams across Hell's Gate on the Fraser river. There is a swing bridge across the churning waters.

The trip across the canyon is slow and gentle but it sure is a long way up and when you look down there is a whirpool of churning waters. 

 A realistic but cut out carriage. I was happy to look out the window of this one.

It is so rough that they have built special concrete fish ladders so that the salmon can swim upstream safely to spawn. They would not be able to make their way through the turbulent whirpool and survive. Cody reckoned if you jumped inand held your breath you might get out the other side. I am not so sure. Apparently they do white (well brown actually) rafting through it although we didn't see anyone trying it yesterday.

 View of the 2 cable trams across the canyon.

View from top in Air tram

Down in the Canyon it was so hot. It was sheltered and the temperature was in the high 30s. There were some really good displays in aircon rooms. It was great to get in there and cool my feathers.

One was about the buildin

097 View of the river with train tracks either side .

099 Display showing how the Frazer navigated his way through Hell's Gate.

Apparently we were heading towards to Harrison Springs for a swim. When we arrived at Harrison there were cars and people everywhere. It was impossible to park. It was so hot that a hot swim would have been pointless. Cody had a cold swim in the lake. It was too cold for theh older people and I didn't want to get my feathers wet. It was a very popular spot and it is a long weekend. July 1 is Canada day and the roads are busy. The RV (very large campervans) are huge and some of them are towing their cars behind. Not small cars either, often 4 wheel drives) The vehicles are huge, small cars seem to have no place on these roads.

Harrison Lake looking towards the Pacific Coastal range.

Harrison Lake .

An interesting drive home. We came home on an different road. We came through a place called Mission and ended up takling a wrong exit and drove through Mission twice. As Coby said ,”trying to leave Mission : Impossible!