1860's Gold Rush Town
Trip Start
Sep 23, 2010
1
115
366
Trip End
Jul 13, 2012
Where I stayed
Cottonwood House Campsite
Barkerville, British Columbia, Canada
Sunday, July 3, 2011
The rain was still a bit heavy but we stopped a few times at some sites of interest one of which was Cottonwood House. They had a fairly cheap campsite with somewhere we could plug-in, so with the thought of setting up now and having a look round and continuing to Barkerville tomorrow. No sooner had we arrived, the skys cleared, so we decided to carry on to Barkerville to spend the afternoon there and then come back this evening to camp. The rain did come back on the way but nowhere near as bad and soon stopped later in the afternoon, so we had a few good hours (six in fact) to have a good look round and see a few sketches. Barkerville is a themepark town set back in the 1800's in the middle of the gold rush and quite a fun place. We watched a drunk barristar tell us his story followed by the cemetery walk with the local vicar. Then we attended school with a very strict teacher followed by someone trying to sell us shares in their waterwheel pump and flooded gold mine and finally the local Judge and his story on how he got the name of the 'Hanging Judge'. Time flew by quite quickly and soon it was time to head back to the campsite. It started raining again on the way but we did manage to see a Black Bear eating grass by the side of the road and didn't look the slightest bit bothered by us. Back at camp there are lots of Gophers running around and you have to watch out for their burrows all over the place. Then we cooked dinner in the camp kitchen, had a shower followed by a movie in the van called Kick Ass untill it was time for bed.
4th July.
Woke up around 8am and then had the included (diy cereal and toast) breakfast in the camp kitchen. After breakfast we hung around until the house staff arrived at 10am so that we could have a look round before heading back to Quesnel. It's quite a fasinating house that used to be a roadhouse for the miners on the way to Barkerville. After watching several more Gophers running around the place, we got on the road back to Quesnel.
