August 19

For a change it has been warm and sunny all day. We drove only about a hundred twenty miles to the city of Smithers. We got a late start and had quite a lot to see on the way. The first stop was in the Hazelton Area where there are three small related towns with an Old, a New and a South Hazelton all within a short distance from each other. We stopped at the visitor center at the junction with highway #62 and took the Elantra to the Hagwilget Canyon of the Bulkley River where a single-lane suspension bridge spans the canyon with the river two hundred sixty feet below. It is a very picturesque canyon. From there we visited Old Hazelton which is located at the confluence of the Skeena and Bulkley Rivers. At their visitor center on the bank of the Skeena River we watched a bear on the far side of the river walk down the river bank for quite a ways before going back into the forest. We then paid a short visit to the ‘KSAN Historic Village which is a reconstruction of a Gitxsan Indian village which has stood on that site for centuries. There are communal houses, totem poles and a very old dugout canoe. From there we drove about eight miles to the First Nation village of Kispiox where we saw quite a number of very old totem poles, an old church and typical Indian houses. After that we hooked up and drove a few miles down the road to the village of Moricetown. This seemed to be a town populated exclusively with First Nation people and is the oldest settlement in British Columbia. Right off the highway on a side road the Bulkley River narrows over the Moricetown Falls and flows through the Moricetown Canyon where Indian people were netting salmon coming up the river. The river was full of Pink and some Chinook salmon and it was very interesting to watch a number of people dipping nets into the river at various places around the foot of the falls and scooping out as many as three of four Pinks at a time and an occasional Chinook salmon. Smaller fish were quickly returned and they seemed to only be keeping larger fish. After that we drove the last few miles to a campsite in the parking lot of a Safeway store in Smithers.