Barkerville Historic Town, BC was the site for our weekend's entertainment. Billy Barker discovered gold on Williams Creek in 1862. This triggered a stampede of 100,000 prospectors over the next eight years. They travelled the Cariboo Wagon Road, named the Eight Wonder of the World, and converged on the goldfields and the boomtown called Barkerville.
In its heyday, this was the largest city west of Chicago and north of San Francisco. Hard to believe now. When you visit, you have no cell phone, no internet, and it's darn cold even in August. Gold had a huge draw at the time, though and those services just weren't in too high a demand.
The kids all had a great time gorging on old-fashioned candy. There's numerous stores that sell all types of candy. We also had a fun stagecoach ride and panned for gold. We all managed to get a few flakes of gold in our pan, so it was quite exciting.
We are now in McLease Lake which is just half an hour north of Williams Lake. The grandkids don't want to go home yet, so we've extended our holiday for another 2 days for now.
The top picture is one that displays the horrendous mountain pine beetle damage in the northern pine forests. It is pretty much entirely dead with just a few green trees poking through here and there. Next year, the only green will be the non-pine varieties. We got to see some nice art work done with the wood from beetle infested trees and it's quite pretty. They give the wood a fungus that makes it turn a bit blue. That may be the direction of our forest industry for a while?