Prince Rupert

Prince Rupert

Finally we are at the last leg of our trip, prince Rupert. 

Our downtown RV site was just perfect. A minute from downtown via George!  

Once again we lucked out on the weather and had relatively warm shirt sleeve weather with none of the famous "Rupert Rain". 

By its own admission, this town sees less sun than any city in Canada. However on a clear day it is beautiful. Flowers were in bloom downtown and they are so advanced in the season that their rhododendrons were almost over. However, when it rains, it is legendary. Everyone here tells us about how it even rains horizontally because of the coast winds. This is the only town we have seen with a specialty shop devoted to rainwear called Slickers!

The town of 14,000 is only one of three (the others being Terrance and Whitehorse) in the last few weeks of our travels that seems to be on the positive end of the scale when it comes to economic activity. 

A reasonably active deep sea port, logging, fishing, and tourism all seem to be ticking along. The sport fishing season has just begun and we saw guided tours coming in with many salmon. Also one of the whale watching boats arrived when we were at the pier with at least 75 paying customers coming off ship (at $245 per head!). 

Tourism is now picking up to a point where smaller cruise ships (less than 1,500 passengers) often do make the town a destination enroute to Alaska. The container port handles several thousand containers each year, and trains bring prairie wheat and coal for bulk shipment. Another big hope for the town is the Petronas LNG plant that has already begun infrastructure construction even though it has a few bureaucratic hurdles to pass through before the green light is finally given to the project. Finally, the imminent construction of a second rail line into town from Prince George bodes well for the town's future. One of the young worker-guides at the town's info enter provided us with a wonderful talk-tour of the town's potential as well as its historical past. 

The town has a very long and colourful indigenous history dating back over 5,000 years. With their access to fish, furs, and game meat, the native  population has always thrived in the distant past as they learned to trade with other native populations in the province. Their wealth enabled them time to become very skilled at jewelry making, carving, construction,  boat building, and sewing of ornate clothing.  Today over half the population of the town is of First Nations heritage and the indigenous skills are obvious all over town. 

After I spent a couple of hours spent in the hospital's emergency ward with an ear infection, our couple of days also consisted of checking out the very large cultural history Center, walking the shops of the pier area, and visiting one of Julie's long lost cousins. In the pleasant weather it was a great place to just hang out in the sunshine, and get Terry's truck ready with supplies and bikes for Haida Guai. Since it cost more than $600 for the 7 hour ferry ride, return, we decided to take only one vehicle. An RV is over $1,000,   On Haida Guai we rented a 2 bedroom House near the beach. 

We got our RV's ready to store at the campsite and got prepared for our Haida adventure. 

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