Canadians seem to like naming places after royalty. Prince of Wales Island, Prince Rupert, Queen Charlotte Island and the place where we have just spent a couple of nights, Prince George – PG for short. Nice town on Highway 16, the Trans-Canada Highway and on the huge, fast-flowing Fraser River which starts in the Rocky Mountains near Jasper and flows (fast!) to the sea near Vancouver. We noticed a sign on a bridge near Tête Jaune Cache that stated it is ‘the best salmon river in Canada’.
We had spent 7 nights camping so decided to stay in a motel in PG for 2 nights, to do the usual stuff that we do when we hit civilization- wash our clothes, do some shopping, eat out and see what there is to see. Earlier in the day, we visited a Totem Pole museum just west of Smithers. Interesting place, but what was even more interesting was meeting an Australian woman who knows family friends who live in Gatton, QLD. Yep, it’s a small world.
I think I’ll write a whole post about our good and bad experiences booking accommodation, but checking into the Carmel Motel in PG was a very trying time for us, the receptionist and probably the motel’s manager as well. We used Booking.com to reserved a room with a ‘kitchenette’, only to discover that the room we were allocated had no kitchen. Back to reception – ‘oh, yes sorry about that, we don’t have any of those rooms left’. We asked for our reservation to be cancelled, only to be informed that we couldn’t get a refund on the first night’s accommodation as (by now) it was after 6pm. Huh? They can’t supply what we were expecting, but they won’t give us a refund?! Seems like fairly appalling and flawed logic in these days of social media. Anyway, Greg phoned Booking.com and while he was on the phone to them, someone rang the motel and cancelled their booking (either that or the manager had second thoughts and realised that they would come out of this looking bad) … so we got our room. With kitchenette.