When we left Baby Nugget RV Park, it was a quick 0.5 miles before we turned left onto the Cassiar Highway (BC Hwy-37 South) and back to narrow, bumpy, frost heaved roads. We passed gorgeous lakes such as Blue Lake and Simmons Lake. Randy was thrilled that he somehow spotted a black bear off of the road and was able to get the RV stopped in time to get a couple of photos. He flagged down the 5-wheel with the Adventure Caravan that was following us so he could get a photo and the bear could cross the road unharmed. I think the driver of the 5th wheel did not want to stop because he kept flashing his lights at Randy. He didn’t slam on his brakes until he saw the bear! Randy said the photo he got of the bear looking at him with some foliage in the foreground was his favorite photo he has taken on the trip. You can also really see the foliage starting to show their changing colors. Randy likes the black bears better than the grizzly bears. Unfortunately, later on our drive we missed the photo of a mama bear and her 2 cubs. Randy yelled “camera, camera, camera” but by the time I got the camera out, the sow and cubs had jumped back into the bushes. One disadvantage of the RV–its noisy!!
We stopped at our planned photo stop at Jade City on our way to Dease Lake. According to Wikipedia, Jade City is a “spot on the road” in northwestern British Columbia, Canada, near the Yukon, located on Highway 37, west of Good Hope Lake and close to Cassiar, in the Cassiar Highlands. Jade City is not a city but a highway community made up of a jade business that specializes in jade products with free jade-cutting demonstrations, a store and a small motel. The store has a large selection of beautiful jade items for sale. The small motel offers lodging and RVs may overnight in the parking area adjacent to the store but we continued on to for another 72 miles to Dease Lake. The region around Jade City is rich with serpentinite, greenstone, and Nephrite jade. Jade City gets its name because of the large outcrops of high-quality jade mined throughout the Cassiar Mountain Range accounting for about 75% of the world’s supply. It is also the production location of “Jade Fever” a jade mining-based Canadian realty TV series from Discovery Channel, Canada, about glacial deposit placer and hard rock mining in the Cassiar Mountains region and Turnagain River basin of British Columbia, near Jade City. We did not see any filming activities.
I spent some time in the store and bought a beautiful necklace, small bracelet and bone and jade bear charm. I fell in love with a whale tale carved jade necklace, but even with the 10 percent caravan discount, I could not justify the $700 price. Randy and I both enjoyed watching the jade cutting demonstration and Randy liked looking at all of the various rocks and boulders of jade; especially the small ones in the old Dodge pickup! After our scavenger hunt photo, we were off again on the narrow, windy roads. There is not much in this park or even in this town so we enjoyed a nice nap. I also caught/up on laundry and a few chores before the delicious fajita dinner provided by the Caravan.
