May 26 – To Liard Hot Springs, BC

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A beauty overload today. It was kind of cloudy all night and this morning which made it not quite so cold. As we got on the road the clouds soon went away for another beautiful sunny day. We took about 600 pictures.

We first worked our way down from the high point on the road. It was great for the gas mileage to coast for a long way.

Some ups and downs as we moved along the valley wall.

We followed a river for a while along side some lower mountains.

Just as we got to our first stop of the day we started see some more big stuff.

We stopped at the Toad River Lodge mainly because they had free WIFI and it allowed us to post the previous blog entries and to see if we had any important emails.

We also had to check out the hats. Depending on where you read about the place, they have from 6000 to 8000 baseball caps nailed to the ceilings of the various buildings.

Our next stop was a viewpoint called Folded Mountain for obvious reasons.

Then back to driving down the valley between taller snow capped mountains.

The drive along Muncho Lake was very pretty. The water is a jade green colour from all the suspended minerals. The road is carved into the cliff side with netting preventing the falling rocks from getting on the highway.

The north end of the lake was still frozen.

The things I won’t do to try and get a picture. Some of the trees were blocking the view from the ground.

Our first animal block. These guys wandered on and off the road for a while.

We passed a herd of bison with a few young ones.

Just after lunch we arrived at Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park. There is a huge parking lot (kind of ugly) across the highway where you can park overnight for free and just pay $5 a person to use the springs or you can camp for $21. We went in to the park.

You walk about 1/2 km on a boardwalk to get to the springs.

There used to be two pools but one is now permanently closed.

The water leaves the springs at this end at about 126F. Its gets cooler as you go farther down the pool. Even at the far end of this pool it still seemed hotter than our hut tub. I couldn’t even get close to the hot end.

After the little waterfall the lower pool is much cooler. It almost seemed cold after being in the upper section.

There is also a small waterfall that had created some mineral terraces that they call the Hanging Garden.

Not sure why the other pool was closed.

The hot water made us so sleepy that after going back to the RV we slept so long that we had quite a late dinner.

I went back for a quick dip at about 9pm. The water actually seemed cooler. The hot water seems to be in a layer near the top with cooler water underneath. The more people in the pool, the more it gets mixed up and the cooler it gets. I was able to get 2/3 of the way to the source this time before I felt boiled.