So after a long day of driving to get here, we had a planned rest day to explore this little city.
So what do we know about PR? Well we believe it is the most northerly Coastal city in BC that is accessible by road and we know it is WET, capital W Wet. Records indicate that in a typical year Prince Rupert has up to 240 days with some measurable precipitation. It wasn’t raining when we arrived yesterday and we awoke to some blue sky peaking through scattered cloud, so with some urgency we thought we better get out there before the rain gods decide to give us a PR initiation.
We had heard about the Butze Rapids trail walk. This is a “popsicle shaped” 5 Km trail that has a lot of elevation change. We set out with Jebo and knew he needed a good run after that long day in the car yesterday.
As soon as we entered the trail we were immersed in the feel of a rain forest. Large skunk cabbage growing up to three-feet tall abounded.
Immense tree trunks covered with mosses greeted you at every turn. The trail is well surfaced and gravelled to keep the footing very flat and safe for running, which is great because it is hard to keep your eyes on the trail with the incredible “greenery” around. It is so drastically different from a typical Okanagan trail, dry , crusty and unfortunately in the middle of the summer, seemingly a tinder box ready to ignite, beautiful in its own right but so very different from this.
We found some beachfront, and as the tide was well on its way out we were able to walk out to some of the huge driftwoods that marked the beach. We of course found many huge tree trunks that we had to climb on for the standard “tree trunk photo”.
The forest lining the trails was so thick and lush, Jebo was pretty much forced to stay on the trail, which we were happy about as we were warned about the Wolf population surrounding this area.
We are pretty sure Jebo could stand up for himself but…
So it took us 58 minutes to navigate the 5 km trail, and we were happy that we got through that portion of the day without getting wet, always such a bother when you are traveling. So what to do with the rest of our day?
After showering, watching the golf and having some brunch we headed out to the North Pacific Cannery Museum, a National historic site. The longest running Salmon cannery in BC, it was started in the late 19th century.
But, frankly, we are not really museum people, so as the skies were still relatively blue, we decided to find another hike, and off we went to the Tall Trees hiking trail. The is a 5 km hike that takes you up to some incredible vistas of the PR harbour and the mouth of the Skeena. As with the morning hike, you enter the trail and immediately feel transformed into a rain forest environment, the difference here is the scale of the trees, magnificent in stature, moss covered and dense.
The trail surface again is flat and impressively maintained and mad it easy for hiking, at least for the first km, then the trail starts to head up and a steeper pace. It took us on a 1.5 hour journey to the top, thankfully the skies stayed clear and my phone battery stayed alive enough to grab some photos of the vistas from the top.
It wasn’t much quicker coming back down and so after almost three hours we arrived back at the car, every one pretty spent but really happy.
After a bit of a lazy rest of the day and ordering in some Dolly’s fish and chips, we saw that the skies were incredibly blue and we went out to try to catch the 9:59 sunset over the PR harbour. It was incredible.
📷📷
And the one common theme throughout the day was reinforced again on our walk back to our hotel from the sunset, when a local kid remarked about how beautiful our dog was. We had heard this and chatted with just about every person that passed us on the Butze and the Tall Trees walks. The people of PR seem so genuinely friendly and quick to say hello, especially if you have a dog. Its our kind of town.
We know PR doesn’t show her sunny side two days in a row very often, but we were so happy she decided to show it to us
Now it was time to rest up, tomorrow brings us to the Alaska Highway and deep into “Bear Country”, gotta remember the bear bells!
Todays Trip Mileage - Zero
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