Our road trip/geo-cache holiday is almost over.  We found all the caches we had time to find.  And there are some left we can find on another trip.  It is always good to have some things undone or unseen on your travels; it gives you an excuse to come back.

We woke to overcast skies and had the truck packed and gassed up by 10 to 10.  It is 453 km from Bella Coola to William’s Lake where we will stay the night.  There were caches we did not have time to get on our drive down that we want to pick up if we can, plus #147 of the Freedom Trail Series to complete all the caches on the Anahim Lake Power Trails.  We also wanted to check again at the viewpoint at the top of The Hill of Heckman’s Pass for a cache we couldn’t find when we went down.

We reached the bottom of The Hill, and the start of the gravel road, an hour later.  It takes about 15 minutes to navigate The Hill and another 15 minutes to clear the Pass. (It is really quite astonishing how quickly you move up the mountain.  A couple of switchbacks from the bottom and you are wa-a-a-y up there.) At the top we pulled into the viewpoint again to look for the cache.  Still no luck (I messaged the Cache Owner from the hotel tonight to tell him/her where we thought it should be and if we were correct it was missing.  He/She messaged back right away to say that we were right and told us to log the find.  Nice.)  The view was quite different from when we drove down 5 days ago.  Then we looked out at the mountains and blue sky.  Today the valley was shrouded in cloud. We drove straight to the location of cache #147 of the Freedom Road Series.  Mr. Grizzly was not dining this morning although I am pretty sure I saw him in a creek a few kilometers before the cache site.  It was a quick find when you don’t have to go around a bear. After we found the cache we went back to the Eagle’s Nest Resort to return our room key, which John had discovered in his pocked two days after we left.  We had a nice chat with Tim and his wife and headed into Anahim Lake to get a couple of the caches in the town before we hit the road to William’s Lake.We only stopped to look for caches that were near the road.  With the distance we had to travel today we did not have time to go 10 or 20 km down a side road or hike up a hill. The only cache we walked a ways to get to was Towdystan Pictograph cache. It was only a 100 or so meters along a path in the bush.  Apparently there are quite a few of these paintings on rocks around the area.  They were painted to commemorate an important occasion or event in the life of a First Nation’s person.  The design is pretty much worn off but it was interesting to see anyway. At a rest stop near a water conservancy I spotted this guy on the back of the washrooms while hunting for the cache.  My what long antennae you have..

We arrived at William’s Lake a little after 6:30 so even with the stops we made good time and didn’t get in too late.  Then it was dinner, photos, blog.  And now bed.