9 June

The first must see place our Texans told us about was Muncho Lake. We would be going past it to go to Liard Hot Springs, and they said we should plan on stopping because it was so spectacular. But I’m getting ahead of myself. This whole day was spectacular. It was another bright, blue sky day. Blogs from other travelers said we’d see lots of animals, so we were keeping a sharp eye out for them as we went down the road. The first one we saw was a bear, just glimpsed in passing. The next black bear was grazing beside the road, and we got some great shots of him, munching on the grass and flowers. The third bear nearly customized our front end – Gerry got the MH stopped just a few feet away from him. It was a real heart thumper! We also saw a moose, and some stone sheep (very similar to big horn sheep) as the day wore on.

The other thing we saw was miles and miles of simply breathtaking scenery. There were rushing rivers, full of glacial silt; spectacular mountains still covered in snow; amazing geology (one mountain had been folded back and forth like a dinner napkin in a fancy restaurant) and there, at the end of the day, was Muncho Lake. It’s a glacial lake with water that’s an impossible blue-green. The end of the lake was so smooth that the surrounding mountains looked like they were reflected by a mirror instead of water. We were lucky enough to find camp sites at the Macdonald Provincial Park. As I sit here at my computer I can look out the front window at the beautiful, smooth lake just 15 feet away from our front bumper. This is one of those hidden gems that lucky travelers sometimes stumble on and in years to come when we talk about this trip, we’ll always say, “Remember Muncho Lake? What a gorgeous place!”

Gypsy thought it was great, too, because she could run and splash in the water, but she didn’t do that as long as she usually does. Hmm, could it be because the temperature of the water was only a couple of degrees above freezing, and the last of the ice had melted only last week?

We decided to do a potluck dinner, so Bob and Sharon put a couple of steaks out on their picnic table to thaw. Alan and I were doing some bird watching, trying to figure out what kind of gulls were swimming in the lake (Herring and Mew gulls, we finally decided) when several grey jays showed up and started flitting around very boldly. Later Bob admitted to us that he had violated the “don’t feed the animals” rule. The jays had discovered the thawing steaks and were helping themselves to a little snack. So there wasn’t as much steak on the plates as they had originally planned. As we were eating, the jays were doing low passes over the table, very disgruntled that we weren’t sharing any more.

We also got to see two float planes land almost right in front of us. There were all kinds of flying things to entertain us!





Muncho Lake at 10 pm, still beautiful.