Prince Rupert – the city

Sunday, May 10, 2009 – Day 10 – Mother’s Day

To celebrate Mother’s Day we slept in till 08:30 this morning.  Janet did not get breakfast in bed, but I did offer to buy her a fresh crab later in the day.

We went into Prince Rupert about 9:30 and parked in an area of town called Cow Bay.  Apparently when Prince Rupert was quite young, a farmer took a herd of cattle into this area by barge and established a dairy here.  The area right along the wharf is themed with black and white cow dots.  Garbage bins, lamp posts, barriers on the street are all painted in this theme.  The shops are appropriately named Cowppuccino's, Udder Bags and the Cow Bay Cafe.  We roamed around this area for a while as it was early Sunday morning in the shoulder season and most shops were not yet opened. We continued our exploration of the wharf and downtown area with a visit to the Provincial Courthouse building and the Sunken Gardens to the rear of it.  The Sunken Gardens are the result of excavations for the courthouse building and have subsequently been transformed into a beautiful garden.  Even early in the season with the temperature hovering around 7C you could tell that this would be a really pleasant place for an employee or a tourist to have their lunch in the summer sun. 

We saw a number of totem poles at various places around the downtown and then went to the Museum of Northern British Columbia. Again because we are so early in the season, it was not open but are hoping that we can fit this into tomorrow’s (Monday) schedule.  We returned to the trailer for a quick lunch and then we were off again exploring.

When I was a kid, I can remember learning about the Reversing Falls in Saint John, New Brunswick.  Well the Butze Rapids in Prince Rupert are apparently just as spectacular.

The Rapids are created during a flood tide (coming in) or an ebb tide  (going out), when the water is forced through a narrow strait producing a torrent of foaming water.  We had read in one of the guide books that it was a short walk from the parking lot off of Hwy 16.  A short walk turned into a hike of 5.4 Km – now that doesn’t sound like much to most “flatlanders” from the prairies but it was 2 hours of torturous up and down hiking through a rainforest to get there.  The rainforest was spectacular but both of us decided that we would need a shower and a massage tonight.  Happy Mother’s Day!