Travel Talk

Road Trip from PG to Squamish & Gliding in Pemberton

July 21, 2012May 14, 2018 by SHABL

Good day,

Tonight is the last full night of the #ExploreBC Project that I’ve been part of for the last month. I’ve had an amazing month but definitely drained as I’ve given 110% to experiencing and documenting as much of British Columbia as humanly possible. We’re at the Executive Suites in Squamish and checked into a sweet suite. Enough of that though, let us discuss the road trip we’ve been on the last few days from Prince George to Squamish, British Columbia…

We left Prince George and immediately our “trusty GPS” sent us down a road that a lady in Wells informed us was a logging road that closed 12 years ago. She said she has met countless adventurers, explorers okay, okay, tourists who have been caught down that path. You’ll drive forever until you’re only 20km short of the spot and the road turns into a river, you’re forced to backtrack or venture to Quesnel. We opted for Quesnel and there was a fair of sorts transpiring, too bad we couldn’t stick around and kick it, looked fun.

Naturally, we never made it to our canoe trip which wasn’t so cool but that’s life, right? From there we drove to Barkerville which is this historic town from the gold rush era where not much has changed, seriously. It’s the type of place where your average visitor is Bob Barker’s age or a young family with children under twelve. Suffice to say I ended up really enjoying it and got into the whole early 1900’s vibe in a hurry. What I LOVED MOST was that everyone there tipped their hat at me, I was hat tipping like a tornado or a Tasmanian devil and felt terrific about it but I digress…

After a morning strolling around and imagining what it was like, we drove to Wells. There isn’t a lot going on in Wells but what was happening was right up my alley. It was this tiny town and we hung out in the General Store for a while with a lady who we’ll call “Mrs. Grizz”, she filled us in on the area and we had numerous laughs. We walked the streets and as it turns out, still lots of prospectors around. More than 1.3 million tones or something crazy has been mined from the area. Mrs. Grizz says she still goes panning and once found a 5gram nugget, indeed. The main hotel / pub across the street has stellar food and it was a cool stop.

From there we drove to Williams Lake where we checked in before checking out of this world and passing out after going nuts at California Sushi. I’ve eaten so much sushi on this trip that I realize I could eat it everyday and that I now am disgusted with dynamite rolls, no more dynamite rolls, they went from being dynamite to a dud, too much of anything right!?

The next morning we made the long haul from Williams Lake to Pemberton where we met with the Pemberton Soaring Centre aka these chill dudes from the Czech Republic who took us gliding. We went in a motor glider aka it has a small motor to get you going but then you just glide and absorb the scenery, it was heavenly and I almost lost my lunch when we caught some G’s. We did it once and my camera wasn’t on so we did it again and then I went green, ha. I’ve never done anything like it and it’s a blast. My favorite parts were seeing all the surrounding golf courses that had finely checked fairways and just hitting hotspots and like a bird, circling higher. Stay tuned for a video about the experience in the coming weeks.

So this is where you think the road trip ends, right? From there we jumped back into our trusty Prius V which has been a beauty this whole trip. Granted the car doesn’t accelerate like a Mustang but it does go incredibly far on very little fuel, so far that you may get scared you’ll run out of gas between towns because the idea of “filling the tank” simply never crosses your mind, it’s that good on gas. From there we made our way to Squamish and the Executive Suites that I mentioned earlier, naturally we’re about to go for more sushi and the photo below is the view from our balcony.