Any creepy topic that doesn't fit the categories below.
#96077
Slightly off topic (depends how you interpret a "ghost town" i guess LOL), but, I thought was interesting and since there's not a lot else going on on here these days, figured why not... PM can chastize me for it later. :P

The family and I are just back from a two and a half week camping trip to the BC's Cariboo region (smack dab in the middle of the Province, about 650km North of our home here in Vancouver, and in terms of distance from big cities, relatively remote - gasp! we had no cell service for most of our trip. It was heavenly!). One of the places we made the trek to was Quesnel Forks, which is a legitimate ghost town. It sits about two hours from the city of Quesnel, one hour highway followed by another hour of gravel logging road with the last 6km being narrow, twisty and steep as you go down to the site of the town. The whole area was the site of BC's Cariboo Gold Rush in the 1850's which followed the California rush - and, interestingly, the signage at the town says that in the 1850's this was the site of the second largest city in all of Western North America, at the time, second only to San Fancisco. Quesnel Forks is literally half of what it was 50 years ago (ahem, aside from the fact that it has a population of zero) - more than half of the "city" has been washed away by the Quesnel River. We were pleasantly surprised by what we saw when we got there - many of the buildings have been restored, or, "reinforced" by volunteers from a nearby community. When the gold rush finished (or, more accurately, when the placer mining phase finished) the town's inhabitants departed, mostly, a few die hards remained with the last one passing on in 1954.

Im going to also post some photos from our trip to Barkerville (not *that* far from there) which is *NOT* a ghost town (but, isnt really a functional community either, it's been a protected Canadian Heritage site for the last few decades). Things to remember, if you choose to continue reading, in the 1850's the miners who went here, largely did it on foot, on little more than a horse trail. Hundreds of kilometers from Vancouver - which is *thousands* of kilometers from San Francisco - or, as some miners known as "overlanders" found out when they tried to make the trip across the thousands of kilometers of uncharted land between Winnipeg and this area a distance across horrifically harsh terrain (ie the Rocky Mountains) - which they expected would only take six weeks, on foot. Sadly, two thirds of the people who tried this perished.

We learned about the climate first hand while there. My thirteen year old said "we got to see all five seasons" during one day in Barkerville. Beautiful spring like weather when we arrived. Hot, blazing sun by mid-day. Thunder & lightning followed by a brief torrential downpour. Sun, mixed with more heavy rain (together, WTF, where the rain was coming from is a mystery), more lightning, heavy hail (heavy - i mean, there were two inches of hail accumulated when we left the theatre show). They have a sixty day frost free growing season followed by a ten month winter which sees an annual snowfall of thirty FEET.

Oh, and yeah, mosquitos the size of small birds. Mixed with the occasional moose, black bear, grizzly bear, loose cattle, coyotes, ground hogs and lots of deer. Fortunately, we didn't run into any Grizzlies during our trip - much to my relief (and my daughter's chagrin). Nothing like coming around the corner on a gravel logging road doing eighty to find a moose standing in the middle of the road a couple hundred feet away. The part I found amusing, he just kinda turned his head to look at us, then casually sauntered off into the bush. No big deal. Ugh. At least the fishing was good. :lol:

Anyway... some Quesnel Forks photos follow

No idea how old this is, definitely not 1850's LOL

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The Quesnel River, right on the doorstep of Quesnel Forks

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The remains of three buildings visible in this one

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One of the old buildings. It's been shored up to keep it from collapsing any more than it has already

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A couple more disintegrating buildings

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The volunteers from the nearby town of Likely have done a great job of marking and restoring much of the town, but, I found peering into the bushes to be just as interesting as wandering through the maintained area - there were many structures that are in overgrown areas...

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An example (in colour) of what the restored / protected buildings look like:

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Oh, and, yes, we'd definitely go back. :)