Any day that followed the day we just had was going to be tough. That drive to Stewart was amazing, and all those bears - we knew that wasn't going to happen again! Still, we awoke at a great campsite, got all organized and hit the road at a decent time. Today, we were traveling between two Provincial Parks in Northern BC. While the scenery was nice, it was nothing like what we had just experienced.

Breakfast at Meziadin Lake Provincial Park, before getting on the road. There was some great morning mist hanging over the lake.

The scenery as we started our was nice, and we saw another black bear early on (no match for the 10 we had seen the day before!) but it was a pretty long and uneventful trip. We stopped at Kinaskan Lake for a short rest, then around Dease Lake for lunch. Our original plan had been to stay at Kinaskan Lake last night, but after stopping in to have a look, I think we made the right choice on which lakes to stay on. Kinaskan is a much bigger lake, big enough that there were whitecaps on it this morning.

Mom and Dad trying not to fall into Kinaskan Lake.

Red squirrels were the most common wildlife we saw on the trip. They chattered at us at pretty much every stop. This little guy was happy to pose for me, during our stop at Kinaskan Lake.

Our last stop was at Jade City, the site of a jade mine that supplies (according to them) 90% of the world's jade. It seems that northern BC has the largest deposits of jade in the world. We wandered about and had a look at the items on sale. Justine bought a couple of small items to take back. The little store was interesting but it was a short stop.

It was about 4:30 when we got to Boya Lake, our destination for the evening. The campground and campsite was amazing. We managed to get a spot right on the lake, with what ended up being the perfect view north.

Saw blades for cutting stone, outside the Jade City Store.

Our campsite at Boya Lake. A perfect spot on the lake, with a view north. That ended up being key...

We got all setup and had a drink, then Justine and I went for a short hike on a trail near our site that went out a ways along the lake. It was a beautiful trail with lots of aspen starting to change colour. This was really the point in the trip where we started to see a pronounced change in the colours of the leaves on the trees. It was part of our original thinking on the timing for the trip, that we might see some fall colours by leaving it late into August.

There were also an assortment of cool looking mushrooms all along the trail. On pretty much every little hike we took on this trip, there were so many interesting mushrooms. The trail was only 1.5 km long, so we finished it up quickly and got back. Mom and Dad then went for a walk themselves and I tried fishing for a while without much success.

So hard to capture in photos, Boya Lake has this great turquoise colour to it.

The hike provided us with many great views of the lake, in the afternoon sun.

Aspen (I think) forest on the hiking trail.

When Mom and Dad got back, we had dinner and relaxed for a while. It was getting cold as the sun disappeared so we got a nice fire going. As the sun started to set we got loons calling, which was just perfect.

As there was a bit of cloud, we had something of an interesting sunset. While we were faced the wrong direction to see it directly, our part of the lake got a bit of colour as the sun went down. Fortunately, the cloud dissipated as the evening progressed, and we were left with mostly cloud-free skies.

Later that night we stayed up a bit later and we were excited to see our first view of the northern lights! The show lasted for about and hour and while they weren't the brightest, it was still really cool to see.