Day 15: Smithers BC - McBride BC

I have been here before.  The entirety of today's route being a replay of ground covered in 2015.  Then it was raining.  Today it was mostly sunny, though there was an attack of smoke west of Burns Lake and another hovering over Prince George.  But I get ahead of myself.

Examination of the plastic box in which I keep my stock of tea bags revealed a noticeable shortage of, well, the wherewithal to make The Cup That Cheers.  Assembling all available digits into some kind of arithmetical device indicated that I had done my sums wrong.

• I am in ABROAD, where the FOREIGNS come from, for a month
• Two mugs of tea per evening
• Two bags per mug, for the mug is large

Eighty tea bags will not be sufficient, will it?  Fortunately the prospect of a tea drought was staved off by the good offices of Safeway in Smithers, who sold me, for the princely sum of seven dollars and thirty-nine cents, this:

BC-16 as far as Prince George, when it's not hidden behind a cloud of smoke, is quite agricultural though there are still enough trees to support a heavy population of sawmills and the inevitable logging truck plague that goes with them.  And quite a lot of other traffic as well, which is definitely a novelty after such a long time in the wilderness.  BC does, however, have some cool roadside bins:

as well as this odd memorial thingy:

Named in 1913 after Tintagel, Cornwall, England.  The central stone in this cairn once formed part of the Norman walls of Tintagel Castle, reputed birthplace of King Arthur, Knight of the Round Table.

To Vanderhoof.  Vanderhoof claims to be the geographical centre of British Columbia.  It's more than 400 km as the crow flies from the coast and and >500 km north of the 49th parallel, which gives one some idea of just why it's taking me four days to get from Watson Lake to USAnia.

Prince George is by far the biggest place I've been to since leaving Anchorage and sits coughing under a cloud not entirely of its own making.  BC-16 soon emerges into the sunshine on the other side and back into the trees for most of the remaining 200-odd km to McBride.  The Rockies are doing their rearing-up trick in the distance and there are some quite nifty mountains surrounding McBride too, though the town nestles in the Robson Valley and has fields and cows and things in the vicinity.  If you're good, I'll show you the view from the North Country Lodge tomorrow.