If you are intent on continuously looking for wildlife whilst driving nothing appears. Leaving Barkerville just concentrating on our journey and suddenly the RV in front slowed down for a moose by the roadside - No photo though. We did get photos of old rusty cars which don't go anywhere when we appear. Outside the towns people seem to have lots of space and old vehicles don't seem to get traded in but left out to graze. We moved onto to the outskirts of Prince George - just a stop for the night. Donna has been trying to perfect a Kootenay sandwich using foil and a frying pan but they end up more soggy than toasted, then we had a revelation. When we have an electric hook up we have 2 mains sockets in the camper we can use. After careful examination of how many amps each circuit would take and what our total current can be we stealthily started taking electrical appliances out of their boxes in Walmart to determine how many amps each one pulled. It was a toss up between a sandwich maker and a toaster and the toaster won. Our lasting memory of Prince George (which is a city not a pub!) is the number of tramps we saw! After eggs and soldiers for brecky we drove most of the day to Smithers. Today is Friday and start of a long holiday weekend as Sunday is 'Canada Day'. We were told that RV parks would be busy so we had booked ahead. We pulled in at Glacier View RV park just north of the town. In recent years the glacier has drastically reduced in size and that eventually the RV park will have to change names as there will be no glacier to view. For now, we could see the glacier but not the mountain summit whose slopes it was clinging to. Saturday the weather forecast was awful and when we awoke all the mountains were completely shrouded in cloud - where's the glacier gone? For a second time we tried a round of golf - 13 holes and there were only 2 other players besides ourselves. We don't have many clothes (you can probably tell that from our photos) and wearing the same clothes again and again takes its toll. Whilst there was a good selection of shops available we decided to buy new trousers and shirts - my shirt was off the clearance rail, only £3.00! We also treated ourselves to Scrabble - we have no TV, we never have Wi-Fi good enough to stream and we need a change from Monopoly and cribbage. For Canada day our friends Francine and Hendrik should be hiking a mountain local to themselves (along with most of the residents of Rossland), so we chose our own mountain to hike up - Harvey Mountain. The forecast was excellent, but not to be trusted. We drove down a narrow gravel, potholed road to the trail head. It was raining when we set off on foot and the mozzies were biting. We seemed to make progress on foot as fast as what we had driving down the track. The leaflet said we would walk through alpine meadows which we did after an hour and a half of trees. Once in the open the weather deteriorated and the summit did a vanishing act as we were beaten by rain then hail. Coming down was a Canadian family with small children and a huge dog called Moose. They had big rucksacks laden with camping gear and everyone carried their fair share including the kids and Moose the dog who was wearing panniers! There was no view from the summit, it was a typical British view although it was a British Columbia view. We stopped for lunch on top and it was freezing - we wondered if Francine and Hendrik had fared any better. We didn't have a Canadian flag to plant on the summit so we performed our very own bear bell dance instead (see the video tab)After descending and eventually driving on tarmac the sky cleared, the sun came out and we could clearly see the top of Harvey mountain - Ba#tard Weather! One day a year only and this was the day the Northern Lights Animal sanctuary opens its doors to the public. It was not far off our drive back so we detoured there to see orphaned bear cubs that wold be released back into the wild next year, lynx, cougar, deer fawns and otters. The bear cubs were so cute and the otters extremely curious. Back at base we set up the BBQ and it rained, after moving everything undercover it stopped raining so we carried on as planned. Our last day in Smithers - wall to wall blue sky. We headed up to the ski area, another unpaved road which took us far longer than anticipated to drive up. Our hike was to Crater Lake and possibly beyond. We were soon above the trees with fantastic views of distant snow-capped peaks, stunning. We knew that there was a summit behind crater lake that was supposed to be another 2 hours walk. The recommended route to the summit was a spur behind the lake, getting onto the spur was the problem as it was heavily corniced with snow, maybe in a few more weeks it will devoid of snow but not today. We headed up a different route at least hoping to get onto a ridge leading to the summit. Above the ridge there was a hell of a lot of snow, we had our crampons with us but whether it was okay for us to ascend we wouldn't know until we were higher. At 1950 metres with 600 metres of ascent left we turned back. The route was rough but walkable, it would be a slow and hazardous ascent and a very slow descent. The walk and the views were excellent and had we known how long the drive there was we would have made a much earlier start in hope to reach the ridge or the summit. It wasn't until later in the day that I discovered the summit we were trying to reach was the same one as our RV Glacier view - Hudson Bay mountain! We never have a map like an OS map at home, just a leaflet and the trails are generally very well signed. We do have our GPS device though which records our route so we can find our way back even if the clouds roll in around us. To save time tomorrow when we are moving on we stocked up our supplies before returning to the RV park. I went into BC liquor for wine and beer (you can't buy beer in supermarkets here) whilst Donna went into Safeway for Groceries. When I caught up with Donna in Safeway she had a story to tell me! Donna wanted one carrot (as I don't eat them). She bagged it put it in her trolley and walked on. In the next aisle she noticed it wasn't in the trolley! She went back looking for the first carrot without success so she bagged a second carrot and carried on shopping. A few aisles later the second carrot was missing? It then became clear that the carrots were falling out of the slots at the rear of the trolley. She looked for the second carrot but it was nowhere to be found so she selected a third carrot and wedged it in front of the spuds! Where the first two carrots went she has no idea, whoever was picking up these carrots were probably as puzzled at their appearance as Donna was with their disappearance. We tried to fit one last walk in, just a short hike up to the twin falls (below the glacier). The gravel road though was too steep, and potholed, we reversed back down before anyone came up behind us. A great evening so beer and BBQ whilst the weather is good - yum. Time to hit the road again tomorrow, and where we are going looks even more scenic and a high possibility of seeing bears on the road!