We woke up in Quesnel at home of my very good friend of over 50 years, Bev.  We were able to enjoy and nice breakfast before we climbed into Bev’s car (the 3 of will not fit in ours 🙂 )and head out for the just over hour long drive out to Barkerville.  I have heard of Barkerville for most of my life but I have never been here before.  Stu came with his family as a teen, but doesn’t remember much about it.

Barkerville is a ghost town in the Cariboo .  It was named after “William (Billy) Barker” who made his way to the Cariboo from Cambridgeshire, England via San Francisco in 1861.  News of the discovery of gold in the Cariboo travelled to San Francisco.  The photos below show an actor playing Billy Barker describing how he came to the Cariboo, how he found his big strike of gold.  How he gave away a lot of his gold, spent it on alcohol and tobacco.  He eventually got cancer in his jaw and eventually died at the age of 77.  Quite a ripe old age considering the life style that he had.

This is actor Billy Barker

He gave a very humorous, entertaining and informative account of his life

He does resemble the real Billy Barker.

We stroll through the town that burned completely to the ground in 1868 in just over an hour.

It sounds like it was quite a wild place during the gold rush.  At its peak it had 2,000 inhabitants.  75 were women and 45 were children  That leaves 1,880 men.  Quite a lopsided demographic.  It boggles the mind as we look around the town and wonder how all of the possessions and people made the trek to this remote location.

Here are some of the interiors of some of the buildings.

This is the iconic church in Barkerville.  It still has services and is available for weddings.

We take in variety show in the “Theatre Royal”.  There are five very talented performers putting on a typical variety show of the 1800’s.  These are classically trained singers who play a variety of instruments.  Violin, Bass Viola, Piano as well as a number of others.  They on 3 different shows each day.

Today there are not too many people in the town today.  There are at least 3 school groups, but very few other than that.  We expect that once the schools are out for the summer the attendance will increase dramatically.

We spend some time watching the Blacksmith.  He is busy making drink holders since so many were sold for Father’s Day.

We have a number of laundry photos from various parts of the world.  Stu was able to take a few here to add to the collection.  These are from the Chinatown area of Barkerville.  Chinese laundries.

Here is a huge Snooker table that somehow made the journey to Barkerville in the 1860’s.

I love this image.

We had a nice lunch and wandered around the town a bit longer before heading back to the car for the drive home.  Bev lived in the little town of Wells 30 some years ago and actually worked in Barkerville at that time.  She takes us for a little tour of the funky town of Wells.

Funky little home

Lots of public art on display

The Theatre in town

An eclectic house nearby.

This was an amazing day in the Cariboo!!  Thanks Bev for being our tour guide and an amazing host!!  We need to come back.

Here are some of the shots from our 3rd leg of our BBCRT.  Again today the sun was shining  🙂  It was a shorter day, but very enjoyable.

Heading to Quesnel

This reminds us of Canola fields in Saskatchewan

We haven’t figured out if this formation has a name. It reminds us of the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland. They are Basalt Columns. Very cool

Cute little church along the way

The remnants of last years wild fires

More damage

This part of the highway was closed for a period of time last year,

Happy Fathers Day to all of the fathers!  <3 <3

We drove from 100 Mile House to Quesnel this morning.  My very good old friend Bev lives there and we will spend a couple of nights with her.  I will see if there are any usable photos on my camera later.  Stu didn’t take anything today at all.

This weekend in Whistler it is the Tough Mudder competition.  We thought we would be able to watch some of the craziness, but it doesn’t look like it will work out.  The events are not taking place in the Village but it is in Whistler Olympic Park.  A 30 minute drive from the Village.  We heard who we assume were Tough Mudders up at 6:30 this morning at our hotel.  They sounded excited for their day.  We on the other hand wanted more sleep.  🙂

We decided to go back to Pure Bread for our second cup of coffee and another frittata muffin to work on the Sun crossword before returning to Aava Hotel to check out.

We hit the road about 10:30 and head north towards Pemberton.  After we pass through Pemberton and it’s valley we are now officially on the Duffy Lake Road.  The views are absolutely stunning!!  I have no idea why we have never done this drive before.  Here are a number of photos.  Most of them I shot from the moving car.  There were far too few view points to stop and take proper Stu photos.  Click on one photo to being the slide show.

Stunning mountain ahead of us

Notice the large rocks on the right shoulder and then ahead the hairpin turn. The photo is a bit fuzzy, but it was a moving car. 🙂

More stunning mountains

This shows the mountain side covered in netting to protect us from the falling rocks.

This is a beautiful part of Beautiful British Columbia.

And more

The motor cycles love this road

Another shot. I just kept clicking the shutter!!

Heading into Lillooet

Just outside of Lillooet the mighty Fraser flowing below us.

Just outside of Lillooet, a gravel section of the road

More mountains and the river

One of the few pullouts on this road

We had leftovers from our dinner last night so we stopped at Marble Canyon to have our lunch

This is Clinton. Interesting little Garage/Museum with a Studebaker, Austin Minor and Nash Metropolitan

This is some of the burned out forest from last years wild fires

Another stunning mountain

Here is a large birds nest on top of the power pole

Interesting log cabin along the highway

I think this is “Big Sky Country”

A one at a time bridge.

Interesting slide formations

We arrived in 100 Mile House about 3:15 and checked into our reserved motel.  Later we walk across the street to Jake’s Pub & Grill for dinner.  It is 6ish on a Saturday and the pub is very quiet.  Stu has a great burger and I had a nice chicken salad.  We chat with the waitress about the fires of last year.  She tells us she moved up here a few years ago from Surrey.  Last year she said she packed up her guns and ammo, also her dog and it’s food and got out of town before the official evacuation order.  She said it was aweful, which we remember from the news reports from last summer.  She also said that many people evacuated and never came back.  It was a devastating financial hardship on the town.  She and the rest of the town and the rest of the province hope that this year will be different.

We head back out to the village to find somewhere to have dinner.  We find ourselves back at the mountain bike park lift line.  It is about 6:30 pm and the lines are still long.  We spend some time watching the riders fly through the air as they navigate some of the jumps and ride through some tight curves near the end of the course.  Not for the faint of heart 🙂

We checked the ticket prices.  They only seem to have adult prices even though we see many children and teens.  Looking further online they appear to have child and youth rates.  Adult walk up is $73 for one day.  hat doesn’t include bike, helmet or padding rental if you need them.  A season pass for an adult is $795.  If you are local and have your own equipment this could be a pretty good deal.  They all seem to be having a great time.  😉

We decide on La Bocca for dinner.  An Italian restaurant in Village Square.  Stu orders a stein of beer.  It is HUGE.  This costs $9.50.  The same price as the Corona at the Longhorn yesterday.  This is 24 oz of beer!!  Bigger than Stu was expecting 😉

We head back to our most conveniently located hotel packing our lunch for tomorrow.

It is 9:30 as I am writing this, and hear a roar outside.  Upon checking the window we find that the skies have opened up, just pouring!!

It is supposed to be beautiful tomorrow, but I expect the Tough Mudder’s are worried, or perhaps excited as this could possibly make better mud.  We are glad we are tucked in for the night.

As expected our location proved to be quiet through the night.  We woke to a beautiful morning.  We walk through to the Upper Village to find a place for breakfast.  We find a nice little bakery and have coffee and bacon and cheese fritatta.  We grab a table outside and enjoy the sunshine while within view of the Mountain and the Olympic Rings to do the crossword in the paper.

After breakfast we head out to Lost Lake and the path along the Chateau Whistler Golf Course.

The walk to Lost Lake is beautiful.

Golf Course

Some of the many chairs placed along the trail

Beautiful shot of Lost Lake with the Whistler Mountain behind

Interesting flowers we found along the path. Discovered they are called Orange Hawkbits

Austria Haus. This was used by Austria during the 2010 Olympics

A sign explaining the history (8 years 🙂 )

Another view of Lost Lake

The mountai behind the Lupines. (We learned the name of the flowers from another walker on the trail 🙂 )

A little tadpole along with his shadow

A dog out swimming for the ball his owner threw

Stu taking some beautiful photos

It looks like giant leaf lettuce. From what I found online it could be Skunk Weed. We did smell weed on the trail 🙂

my hand to show the size

This is “old man’s beard”. Something we learned last year from Adam at Christina Lake. We gathered it there to help start our camp fires.

The wooden trail along Lost Lake

We make the loop and watch more golfers on the second hole.  We spot a trail that runs along the side of the fairway and decide to follow it.  Not far along we see this.  Hmmmm.  It is bear season.  We turn around and go back to the more travelled trail.

After Lost Lake we to go through Blackcomb Village.  Yesterday Whistler Village was hopping with activity.  Here in Blackcomb it is almost deserted.  There are a few mountain bikers, but really very quiet in comparison.  We feel we have earned a beer, but not much to watch here so we head back into Whistler Village and decide to have a bear at Beacon Pub.

Back to our hotel to watch some of the US Open.

This was our walking route today. I didn’t start the tracker until after our breakfast. 10km so far today.   It is a magnificent day!!

Tough Mudder starts tomorrow.  We are seeing people who we believe are participants arriving into the village.  We may try to watch some of the festivities.

We were not in a rush to get on the road today.  It is Thursday and we are not interested in doing Rush Hour at all.  We packed up the Mazda and hit the road about 11:20.  We had intended to put down the roof and drive the Sea to Sky in the sunshine.  Not happening today.  Rain in Pitt Meadows lessened to drizzle through Coquitlam, Burnaby and Vancouver.  Once past Horseshoe Bay we had sun and showers intermixed.

We arrived at our hotel about 2pm.  Had a bit of a rest before heading out to the village to wander about.

We are staying at the south end of Whistler Village, near the Convention Centre.  It is nice and close for us to walk into the village and back.  Once we are back, it will be quiet when we want quiet.  We have stayed right on the Village Stroll in the past and between 2 and 4 AM, sleeping is quite a challenge.  We should be good here.

Ski season is mostly done here in June, but we do pass some skiers heading back to their accommodation after a day on the high alpine slopes.

Whistler has done an amazing job transitioning from a winter resort to an all season resort.  Mountain biking is VERY popular.  Every other chair lift is reconfigured to carry the bikes, while the next chair carries the riders.  They then get a wild ride back down.  They are all decked out with heavy duty helmets, shin/knee pads and some with body armour.

We wandered about and decided it was happy hour and made our way back to the Longhorn Saloon.  Had a couple Corona’s and chicken wings.  $9.50 for each Corona and $15.00 for the wings!!  Wow.  😉

This is the route we will be taking on our BC Road trip.  We are packing up the little car and heading to Whistler on June 14th.  On the road for 2 weeks, we are looking forward to seeing some parts of our beautiful province that we have never seen before.

We had another quiet night in our little hotel room.  We left the hotel for breakfast today.  When we got downstairs we found that the sun was shining and it was nice and warm.  This is our building.  Right near the sign for the Dog and Duck on the right? The building has a different colour just there and that moves to the left. These seem to be 2 different buildings. Our room we think backs onto the second floor center window that is on the left of the corner. Hence no windows 🙂

We head out to find “The Photographers Gallery”.  We find the gallery and low and behold it is free before noon.  We arrive at 11:55!! BONUS  🙂

There are a number of floors with an exhibition of of a New England photographer.  It was a rather depressing exhibition.  Lots of nude women and clothed men.  No one looked happy.  Lots of  snow and 1 nude dude!  Art is very subjective. I guess.

We left the gallery and heard some loud music and followed it to the source, which was Regent Street.  We did see some signs the past few days about NFL in London.  We now find out that there is a game at Wembly Stadium tomorrow between the Miami Dolphins and the New Orleans Saints.  This is area is a buzz of activity.  Many many people wearing NFL Jersey’s of lots of teams.  I spoke with one fellow wearing a Saints jersey.  He was definitely an American and I believe lots of the people we saw here were.  However, we overhead quite a few people wearing jersey’s with UK accents.  Lots of money being spent on NFL stuff.  One store had setup personalised embroidery for your purchases.  Here are some shots of the festivities.

Shortly after these photos were taken, we spotted 3 men, army we assume, packing machine guns.  A reminder that we are living in scary times.  This event and the game itself are obvious possible targets.  They are being very cautions, with good reason.

We decide at 2pm to check at the Prince Edward Theatre, which is where we saw Jersey Boys in 2011 and which is also a 5 minute walk from our hotel, to see if they have any tickets available for the 2:30 performance of Aladdin.  It was crowded outside but a gentleman radioed inside to see if there were tickets available.  Happily there were.  We were able to get 2 tickets in what they call “the Stalls”, we would call it the lower orchestra.  Not bad.  A bit more money than last night, but I am feeling a bit weak since I got this nice little gift from Stu (a cold), so a matinee will be great.

Our ticket

The theatre

The performance is amazing.  The seats were incredible.  The costume changes right before your eyes were UNBELIEVABLE.  Like how did they do that???  Great show, lots of children.   We followed the crowd to the exit and found ourselves on the street that our hotel is on, half a block away!!  Nice.

We walk around looking for dinner and are still amazed at the activity on the streets of Soho.  We take a few more photos before we pick and Italian restaurant for our dinner.  More Italian, it’s good, we like it!  🙂

This morning this place was covered with scaffolding. They were removing it while we were walking to breakfast. Very cool building

Another interesting building

This place, which is a 2 minute walk was recommended to me by a former co-worker. Won’t be making it this time. I am pooped 🙂

I posted this first photo the other day, but I stood on the bed to capture the second one which shows the room we have between the bed and the bathroom door.  Even still we are grateful for the soundproofing and darkness.  Definitely would stay here again.  We don’t spend much time here.  The location is AMAZING for what we want to do.  Mimi’s Soho gets top marks from us as long as we aren’t drinking in the bar!!  hahaha.

Wall to wall king size bed!! It is higher than normal, so that we can store our bags underneath.

The room between the bed and the bathroom door.

Flight home tomorrow at 2:10 pm.  Sadly Stu is missing the IHL Draft and I am missing the Run For the Cure.  We vow to plan better in the future!!

Well I woke up this morning with Stu’s cold 🙁 .  Niggling throat and cough.  We slept well with little noise, just a bit from other guests in the hallway, but nothing out of any normal hotel hallway.

We head downstairs to have breakfast, which is extra.  They have a 5 GBP deal.  Not knowing what is really close by, we decide to take advantage of that.  Coffee and a croissant.  We’ll find something else for tomorrow.

We rethought the idea of both of us going back to Gatwick to pick up our other luggage.  The train cost us 40 GBP one way last night.  We would need to do that twice and a cab to and from the guesthouse.  So we get a quote from a cab company.  96.50 GBP to pick up the bags and deliver to Soho.  It would probably cost us about the same, but for us it would also be at least 2 hours for the round trip.  We decide on the cab option.  The free bag storage is not so free now 🙂 .

Off to explore our area and try to decide on what show to see.  We stop at one of the many many show ticket offices all over this area.  We are interested in the Book of Mormon.  The fellow says he has 2 together for 90 GBP each.  $300 CAD.  We get his list of productions and decide to have some lunch and find something else.

It is raining off and on (rain jackets are in the stored luggage), so we borrow an umbrella from the hotel.  Head out to wander.  We find that there is a lot of construction going on in London.

In this photo you can see the US Flag and NFL flags in the background. We saw 3 guys all decked out in suits made of Seattle Seahawks fabric. Not sure why 🙂

Near Leicester Square

The Hippodrome Casino

A still functioning phone booth

Piccadilly Circus

The Underground

Piccadilly Circus bus

Interesting bulding

We head back towards our hotel and have lunch in the Dog and Duck, a pub in the same building.

Our building with the Dog and Duck next door

Soho Square and it’s pigeons

Our room is being cleaned so we decide to have a drink in the bar while it is finished.  2 gin and tonic 26 GPB!!  We have definitely learned our lesson now!!!

We check a website recommended by our hotel for theatre tickets.  We choose Kinky Boots.  The website has tickets for 52 GBP each but the reception tells us to go directly to the theatre as we could get a better deal.  We walk to the theatre and get a couple of tickets for tonight for 35 GBP each.  We can live with that  🙂

Our bags have arrived and have been taken up to our tiny room!  We change into fresh duds and head out to the theatre.  This was such fun!  A great cast and wonderful performances.  We get back onto the streets and they are teeming with people!!  If we thought last night was like New Years Eve, we haven’t seen anything yet!!  All the bars are spilling out onto the street.  People outside drinking, smoking.  The sidewalks are mostly impassible.  Given the prices of the drinks that we have bought at our hotel, we are wondering how all these people can afford it???  Then add in the cigarettes!!  Crazy, Crazy!!