Day 20 Lava Bed to Gingolx to Port Edward to Prince Rupert to Skeena River Camp

Up and going pretty early today 7am, towards Gingolx, the drive is very nice the road hugs the water’s edge of Portland Inlet and a mountains for 46km’s, lots a water views and small turns and a views, very steep declines 12% and 16%, funny back home 7% is worth a warning.

 Just 10 minutes in I see my first bear of the day and as it turns out my only bear of the day.  This water is an inlet however it does become the Nass River and so there are salmon running. I see a native fish trap in business and the salmon are called Silvers, never heard of them but in Alaska they had signs announcing that the Silvers had arrived.

Gingolx is a transplanted community from Pearse Island that can be seem in the distance on the other side of the bay.

This was done in the 1970’s, so almost all the houses are 1970’s vintage, there are 3 in great condition, each with paved driveways, a garden, tool shed, grass is cut, the occupant took care of their house and it shows.  However this is a town of about 350 houses and these are houses not mobile homes or converted school portables. The rest of the houses are run down, roofs never replaced and now have a thick layer of mosses on them, no garden, grass never cut, dirt driveway, broken windows with wood coverings or aluminum foil. Trash and whatever furniture was no longer wanted inside dumped out the back or on the front porch.  Common though is a new car or truck in the drive and a satellite dish on the side.

I walk the sea wall and take pic of bald eagles sitting on the rocks nearby.

As I approach the end I see a guy dumping fish cuts beside the sign that says no dumping.  It turns out that within 2 minutes there are 4 eagles fighting over the scraps. As he walks back I ask if there anywhere to buy fish, Jeff says I have some strips and smoked fillets in my smoker.   Yes I’d like to see, Turns out to be a good deal for me 1 fillet smoked dry but still needs cooking and 5 dry strips that are like smoked salmon jerky for $15. 

 I talk to Jeff for a while about the smoke houses and the town, and he apologies for the state of the town. Jeff lives in one the good looking houses, but says since the road came in the 1990’s things have really gone downhill, people of lazy, before everyone had a smoke house now there are only 5 left. 

The town council building and the arena are the two new buildings since the road came and they are great.  If you are not involved with the council or your smoke house, people just smoke drink and watch TV. 

I left Jeff to his smoke house and head to Rosswood boat launch to cook up ½ of the fillet on the rocks. Smoked dried salmon cooks well on an open fire grill, the drying process locks in the moisture of the fish while is cooks on the skin side. 

Driving into Terrace I see a Canadian tire and decide to buy 15amp fuses and replace the one that I think looks good. I make the switch and no change on the plug situation. 50km later towards Prince Rupert I pull off to see if there is another 15amp fused used on the same line as the one I just replaced. Turns out, there is one and its dead, I put the new fuse in and presto plug works. So very happy I plug in my phone and most importantly mp3 player.  BTW when I took apart the dash, I found a copper spring on the plug was not in the right spot so likely it was both the cooper spring and fuse.  Still the heat is on full blast, I failed to figure that one out yet.

I stop off at Port Edward to look at the cannery which now a museum $12. I always like shooting old buildings; 

here there is the old factory on the docks, a rendering plant to extract fish oil for salmon scraps and herring. The canning lines and all the labels that were used, seems that if you bought pink or red salmon in a can in the 1889 to 1976 no matter what brand you bought it was all the same, something to think about when buying canned food in the future

Also they had a house for Japanese workers, another for Chinese workers and several houses for native workers; a general store to ensure workers were in debt to the store and had to work harder; a row of houses for management, a mess hall. 

Yes emigrate to Canada become slaves to the cannery, 1905 technology wiped out the Japanese workers who cut the salmon up leaving a staff of native and Chinese workers.  Once salmon stocks dropped off in the 1950’s things got smaller here and by 1976 is was dead. Interesting the fish oil rendering plant was sold to Mexico in 1986.  

I head for Prince Rupert which turns out of be a waste of time as there is nothing there to see. I check the ferry terminal for a sail to the Queen Charlotte Islands only for find out all room is sold out until September 8^th.  I head back toward Terrace and pull off the road 50km short for the night, free.

I'm not sure if you can see this but the road signs on BC day weekend said Don't Pokeman and Drive

511km today.