Driving to Stewart, British Columbia

Houston, British Columbia had been a pleasant surprise to us.  We really hadn't expected to find much of interest, and it was just a "stop along the way" to Stewart, B.C.  However, our friends George and Nan Finlayson had alerted us that the scenery would get even more grand as we headed west along the Yellowhead Highway from Houston toward the junction with the Stewart-Cassiar headed north, and then west from the Cassiar at Meziadin Junction through the mountains to Stewart.  So we were prepared for scenery.

And we were not disappointed.  Every mile along the route was scenic.

Moricetown, where we stopped briefly, is in a picturesque setting, where the Bulkley River enters Moricetown Canyon before joining the Skeena River near our turn onto the Stewart-Cassiar Highway:

The stretch from Morictown to the junction with the Stewart-Cassiar Highway also offers some very interesting tourist stops, which we could not easily do, but which are summarized in George's blog, here.

Not much further on, we reached the junction with the Stewart-Cassiar Highway, in Gitwangak. Meziadin Junction is little more than just a junction, but the signs give hints of things to come:

Meziadin Lake lies at the junction, and is popular for boating in fishing.  It has a scenic RV campground, where we had originally planned to stop for a couple days - but we're too large to get in there.  It was simply for this reason that we decided to risk pulling the 5th wheel all the way into Stewart, which we had planned to visit by day trip since the drive is through some large mountains:

As you'll find in the next few blog entries, we are very thankful we decided to park the RV in Stewart for a few days.  Not the least of the attractions was Bear Glacier, which sits at the summit of Ward's Pass, over which we drove to Stewart:

The glacier is the centerpiece of British Columbia's Bear Glacier Provincial Park, and is one of the few glaciers located adjacent to a major highway:

Having stopped and gazed at the glacier for a while, we hopped back in the truck and towed the rig on down the Bear River Canyon toward our next campground in Stewart, British Columbia: