1 July
Happy Canada Day!

Last night the rain brought us a series of rainbows.  In fact there was a partial double rainbow, but alas our faithful pocket camera just couldn't capture it.

Today of course it was raining, again.  So we left Teslin and took Canada 37 south on the scenic Cassiar Highway, the whole 724 km.  The drive promised to be eventful, as we saw this guy the first half an hour.

Then about 15 minutes later we saw this group.

And then finally this guy answered the age old question about a bear doing it in the woods.

All in all we saw 8 live black bears and one roadside casualty.  At least we don't think it was just sleeping on the side of the road.  This made for an exciting first hours, but the remaining hours were only greeted by seeing more swollen rivers, lakes and ponds.  We were on the lookout for the illusive moose, as we saw several moose warning signs, but no such luck.  We also saw several Mushroom Buying tents in the first hours.  When we stopped to stretch, we asked about this and the lady said that people go out into the woods to pick mushrooms on weekends.  Apparently they get paid good money for the mushrooms.  Generally areas that are recovering from forest fires make the best foraging areas, starting one year after the fire up until the vegetation starts to green up again.  When we asked what kind of mushrooms, the lady said the kind you eat, and couldn't provide any more information on the variety.

Tonight we stopped in Kitwanga BC, which is at the end of the Cassiar Highway.  Our Milepost says that there's a salmon inventory station here, but the guy in the campground office said that you can't see anything, because the river is too dirty from all the extra runoff.  Feast or famine.

Tomorrow the game plan is to take a casual drive to Prince George BC.  Roger is researching how we get to Vancouver Island, as some Canadians we chatted with last night said that the western side of the island is spectacular.  They were from Calgary.

Add another warning sign to the list:

Livestock  (I think there are some free range highland cattle along the Cassiar Highway, but you can't prove this by us.  This is based on a sign I saw.)