BC Highway 99 Roadtrip in a Camper Van!

So we just left our campsite at Kaljeeg Recreation Site. We had a great stay there. Now we're headed up north on Highway 99 towards Lillooet and we'll see how things are, what the smoke's like over there and we'll find a place to stay. Here's our lunch spot for today along Duffy Lake. Lillooet Recreation Site. There's nobody here. Coming into Lillooet area and we can see the wildfire smoke now on the mountains over there. We've been very lucky so far. Up to this point there was no smoke at all and this beautiful blue sky. So it's very hot in Lillooet. What's the temperature? I think it's about 33 right now but with virtually zero humidity, the ground and everything, it just feels a lot warmer. It's supposed to get to 35 here. Yeah, we're not going to do any walking or hiking at the moment. It's just too hot. Maybe at midnight. We're just, the crows are entertaining us. They're arguing over some food. It doesn't take much to entertain us. So we just dragged ourselves away from our campsite to go for a walk and it's so hot. And this heat is just sapping our energy. So we're going very slowly. The water is very cold. The rock, in contrast, is very warm. It's actually chilly. We kept the cooking to a minimum today because it's so hot. So just having some simple veggie dogs with kind of a Greek salad and some chips and salsa. Gordon, why are we going up this hill at quarter to eight in the evening after dinner? To make sure I get my 11,000 steps in for the day. And it's steep. Who doesn't like to do steep hills after dinner? It's steep but not that long. That was a very refreshing way to end the day. Finally, 11,000 steps. My seven day average is 11,800. But it's high simply because there was a hike or two thrown in there. And we did go to the Fort Barron's winery, bought a whole bunch of wine and joined their wine club. It seemed like a good deal and we got 15% discount which is great. And we also stopped at the Abundance Bakery and Gordon got some great treats. And now we're actually heading back towards Whistler. The reason is it's getting smoky here. We were just chatting to someone who had said that they'd come back from the Cache Creek area yesterday and it was fine. But just looking ahead, there's smoke already moving into the valley. We've got some shots and it's worse the farther south you go. So the closer you get to the interior, the worse. Southern interior of BC, they've still got a lot of smoke and some fires. So we've decided to turn around. Yesterday afternoon it was really hot and we thought... Very hot. It got up to 37. And we were a little concerned about the smoke coming this way. So we just logged on and found a site at the Whistler Riverside RV Resort. So we just snagged the site and decided to just spend the night there. We were a little bit concerned that we might not be able to find a site because it's getting close to the August long weekend. Monday's a holiday and today's a Thursday. So we wanted to make sure we had a site snagged for tonight and we were able to do that. One thing we just wanted to note is that on the highway, the Seton Dam Campground, the BC Hydro Free Campground, it says that it's closed for the season. But don't worry, it is open and it's still free. And there is somebody there. There's a maintenance person that lives on site. And the washrooms are immaculate. There's plenty of toilet paper and hand sanitizer and everything. So it's a great place to stay. And it's free. So don't worry about the sign saying it's closed. The gate is open. You can just drive in and find a spot. We were surprised even though it was a fairly popular time for travel. There were several sites that were still left open last night. Both tenting sites and sites for RVs. It was nice to see. It's a good place to camp. You could stay there for a long time if you wanted. Yeah, our neighbors are staying there for a week. And the nice thing is there's lots of areas you can walk around or hike from the campground. And also you've got the nice river. And you can also walk about half an hour to the lake and you can spend the day on the lake swimming. So it's a great place to stay. We actually picked up, when we were at the winery, we picked up a book on hiking in the Willowwood area. So looking forward to coming back sometime. Maybe even later this summer or early fall and trying a couple of the hikes. We're just out on a mountain bike and walking trails behind, well out by Lost Lake. Yeah, behind our campground. That's what's so nice about being there. A busy place because obviously there's a lot of other campers and the sites aren't very big. But you're just so close to Green Lake and you're so close to the trails here at Lost Lake that it's just wonderful. Yeah. We had a really great night last night. We went for dinner at the Table 19 restaurant at the Nicholas North Golf Club. Out on their patio. It's just amazing. Mountain views, lake views. You've seen us there before and it was just wonderful. Really enjoyed it. And that's one of the reasons why we popped by here and decided to spend our last night here at Whistler. And also the other reason is we're usually here the week of our anniversary. It's on August 5th. But we decided this year that we're going to celebrate our anniversary in Northern Vancouver Island. So we felt like we kind of missed out on the Whistler experience. So we decided to come by and spend one night. And we'll probably be back later. Maybe in September or something. Still get up into the mountains. But we really enjoyed our trip at Lillooet. And the only reason we turned around and came back when we did is because it was getting smoky. And so we wanted to avoid the smoke. Sort of all of the southern British Columbia has got a lot of smoke. From all the forest fire. So we're back here. You can see our seaplane probably just starting off in the background. Yeah and also the ride back on Highway 99 between Lillooet and Whistler. That first portion. Or between Lillooet and Pemberton we'd say. The scenery is amazing. And we don't often take that route south. We usually take it north. Yeah we did this time too. We headed north and the scenery was great. Today it's even better. It was just amazing. Really recommend that road either way. But as Mickey said, driving south from Lillooet to Pemberton was just spectacular. So if you followed our videos you know the last time we were here we had a bear just outside of our campsite. This morning I got up, it was about 6.30 and I went for an early morning walk. I was going to do some exercise. As I'm walking along the road outside of our camp, there's a bear. It may have been the same one. He was a little bit bigger. A mid-sized bear. He was maybe 30 feet away from me. I looked at him and he looked at me. I just kept walking and went past him. As I'm walking along a gentleman comes out of the bathroom that was ahead of me. He says hello and then he looks behind me and sees the bear. The bear is walking behind me. He doesn't say anything. He just points his hand and finger out. I just continued. The bear obviously went off on some side tangent. I get back a little while later and I'm telling Mickey about the bear. As I'm talking to her she says, something is shaking in the bush outside the window. We look out the van and the bear is literally right by the side of our van. Right against the van. We look out the window and he looks up at us. Then he just saunters away. We got a picture as he just went through the shrubs and things that are by our campsite. Just a little bit of video. Also when we were at the Lillooet campground, at the Seton Dam campground, the operator also told us that there was a bear and two cubs that were spotted on somebody's picnic table who left some food out. Yes, don't do that. Yeah, don't do that. Also there were a cougar and a couple of cubs as well. He asked if we had seen it because we were walking on the upper bench and we actually didn't see any animals. Yeah, other than deer. We saw a couple of deer. Anyway, always a good reminder to put all your things away when you go to sleep. Especially coolers. Do not leave coolers outside. The coolers have food in them. Yeah, and also barbecues and things that have a scent. They'll be attracted to it and you'll end up seeing bears in the campground. So now we're going to finish our walk here on the trails and then relax and probably head home. Head home early. So we had a great trip. I think what was kind of fun about it, at least for me, was the fact that we didn't know where we were going to be. And so we just kept driving until it started to look smoky and we had a great time in Lillooet. I really enjoyed the evening when we went down to the lake and we're swimming around sunset. It was so warm. It was probably about 34, something like that. And then it stayed warm all night, actually, maybe too warm. But I sat outside until 11 reading and it was just beautiful. And even at 2 a.m. it was still 28 degrees. So it was a very toasty, toasty evening. But it was really nice. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. So we are looking forward to our trip to Northern Vancouver Island in a few days. And so please stay tuned for upcoming videos for that. And we hope you enjoyed this video. And if you did, please be sure to give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel if you haven't done so already. And we will see you next time on the road. See you next time. Transcribed by https://otter.ai