Mission, BC

Thursday November 29...9:30pm

After breakfast, we decided to put off the hot springs until after our hike. So we left Sherman parked where he was and walked down the road a bit to the start of the Campbell Lake Trail. We had read that this trail was pretty steep, and even the sign at the bottom said it was for
hikers who are "well prepared" and "in good physical condition". We figured we were good to go! It said it was 10 km's round trip to Campbell Lake...about 7.4 km's roundrip to a lookout where there's a helicopter landing pad, and about 6 km's roundtrip to the fire tower.

So we take off up this trail. It's a beautiful sunny morning, and we're working fairly hard going up, so it's soon warm enough to remove hats and mitts. But as we get higher, about 45 minutes into the hike, we get above the snow line. It still wasn't cold, but there was quite a bit of recent snow, and the trail was very steep in sections, and we were the only ones up there. Except for the Sasquatches, but they were staying pretty well hidden! Anyhow, it got so that it was difficult to follow the trail. It took us an hour and 15 minutes to get to the 2 km mark! I had read at the bottom that the trail rose 650 metres, so that gives an idea as to how steep it was. We arrived at a log bridge they had made, and decided it was time to turn around...even though we had yet to get a decent view out of all that hard work. But we could tell Whiskey was getting tired, the snow was at least 6 inches deep along the trail, our feet were wet, and we had just about had enough as well. So we started heading down and after a few minutes noticed a marker on a tree stating that we were at the 550 metre mark. So we likely turned around about 15 minutes too soon! We had been very close to the top! Oh well, we had a good hike, and the scenery with the big trees and the fresh snow was really cool.

 Campbell Lake Trail in Harrision Hot Springs

Up in the snow...looking for Sasquatch footprints... :-)

This log bridge was as high as we went

You can see the snow line clearly...we were well above that!

Made it back to the bottom and had some lunch. Decided against the hot springs swim. The good hot springs pools are in the expensive hotel...and you have to be a guest to use them. The public pool uses cooled water, they wanted $8.50 each, and the pool wasn't really big enough to swim in...we looked through the window and everbody would just get in and sit there...so we figured maybe we'll go to a municipal pool in Maple Ridge tomorrow.

Decided to drive on towards Maple Ridge and see what kind of overnight spot we could find. We pulled off in a little village called Kirby where they have a campground still open. We were the only ones there, but they wanted $20 to stay overnight with no services. Drove on to Mission, B.C. and after doing a fair bit of driving around have found ourselves parked on a dead end road that will eventually become some kind of industrial park. There are too many street lights, but there's nobody around, so this is where we'll stay for tonight.

Total Nights Sleeping in the RV... 46...

November Fuel $ 697.58

November Grocery $ 340.02

November Overnight Costs $ 247.38