Beaumont Provincial Park
Far from the Ocean
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Farwell Canyon
We woke up in the morning West of Williams lake and the plan was
to drive up to Prince George and then West to Beaumont Provincial
Park. We had a plan to stop for a horse back riding trip
just South of Prince Rupert at El Shaddai Ranch.
El Shaddai ranch is basically an owner and his 6 horses. The
ranch is somebody's fail "off-grid" retirement castle - they built
an amazing log cabin but didn't get a roof over over or the logs
sealed so the logs suffered in the elements. The building
has been finished to a barn but the lots are so damaged it would
be hard to bring it up to the standard of a house. The owner
has a variety of horses that ride frequently so they seemed pretty
good with kids. The ranch has a large number of acres but
borders onto provincial land they extends the trails for many km
more. We started with a walk in the forest.
The neighboring provincial land is the left overs from a giant
highways project. They widdened the highway to two lanes,
made it flat and then built a weight scale in the middle.
They were left was a massive ammount of fill that had to be
disposed of so this land was purchased and loaded. That was
probably 10 years ago so the artificial hill of dirt has grown a
thick cover of grass but the trees haven't started growing in
yet. Being on a ridge, the views are great.
We circled back and got a family portrait
in.
Once we got back to the barns the kids didn't want to leave.
There were some compressed oat pellets as treats for the horses
while all of saddles and bridles were removed. The kids had
a great time.
After our horse back riding trip, we got back in the camper and
drove North to Prince George. We decided to stop in at the
local Red Robbin to get dinner (and free Wifi!) before making the
last two hour trip west to Beaumont Provincial Park.
The plan was a "low activity" day here -
riding bikes, go for a swim and maybe get some groceries.
One of our problems with firewood. BC parks campground
rangers often sell a load of firewood for about $10. Because
of COVID, the park was closed in the spring and didn't order bulk
firewood then. When the park did open, everyone else in this
part of the world was preparing for disaster and had already
ordered the following winters load of firewood so there was no
firewood to be bought on the open market. Long story short -
we drove to the nearby RV park and they sold a wheelbarrow full of
wood for $10.
Fraser Lake and Beaumont provincial Park is quite nice -
reasonably warm with a sandy beach that remains shallow for quite
a while. The night before, our kids kindly explained to use
that they wanted "floaties" and a water guns so we stopped at
Walmart in Williams Lake and found pool noodles and water
guns. Of course the water guns are for spraying dad.
After dinner, the kids wanted s'mores. With our new found
firewood, we got a first going and the s'mores preparation
happened. You could probably do a passable job using the
grill in the microwave oven in the camper, but there is
something about using a real live camp fire to make food.
I spent most of time taking in the Aspen forest behind the camp
sites - our coastal campsites are in forests don't look anything
like these trees.
I had a plan to stay up late and do a timelapse from the lake
side. My phone told me that sunset was around 9:47pm so I
started around 9:03pm and took a picture every 15 seconds for 366
photos going to 10:35pm. I ran into two problems.
Standing by the lake side, there were a lot of biting bugs so it
wasn't very fun. Second, this far North, just because it's
sunset doesn't actually mean the sun goes down. At this
latitude, actual "night" doesn't happen in the summer - you just
get various shades of twilight. I was actually hoping to see
Comet Neowise but realized it would never get dark enough to
actually see it. Welcome to the North.
Tags: horse(5), s'more(2), lake(2), stick(1), smoke(1), hand feeding(1)
People: Claira(5), Nara(5), Helen(1), John(1)
From: John Harvey Photo > John's Overnight Page > Prince Rupert Road Trip > Beaumont Provincial Park
From: John Harvey Photo > John's Overnight Page > Beaumont Provincial Park
Last Modified Sunday, January 22nd, 2023 at 00:07:33 Edit
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