19, 20 August 2018 – Boya Lake Provincial Park, BC
The dirt field RV park at Watson Lake wasn’t the type of place that was going to keep us in town. We had seen the sights of Watson Lake and done our laundry, so we were back on the road. We had modest expectations as there was a BC Provincial Park about 65 miles down the road.
We’ve found ourselves avoiding RV parks more and more and intentionally picking out Provincial Parks as places to spend the night. We got to Boya Lake about lunch time. It was a Yukon three day holiday weekend, Discovery Day, so we did have some anxiety about site availability. There were still a bunch of sites left, but we got the last one with direct lake access. The campground did fill up about dinnertime and we watched several RVs pull in, look for a site, and head back down the road.
What a beautiful lake. Apparently the fishing is poor, but the lake is shallow with a deep blue and turquoise color, has a lot of channels and islands, and is popular for canoes and kayaks. The skies were clear despite several near by fires, so we made lunch and inflated the kayak.
Following the recommendation of the occupants of the adjacent site, we set off across the lake and down between several islands. We spotted movement on the shore and paddled over to check it out. We ended up sitting there for about 30 minutes watching a black bear go back and forth between the trees and the water. Even a small black bear starts to look massive as your kayak drifts close to shore!!!
Back at camp, we chatted with our “neighbors”. We had much in common. They had attended the Overland Expo in Flagstaff AZ this year (as had we), and had also attended Busses By The Bridge (a VW event in Lake Havasu City AZ) several times. But they were headed north the next morning, and we were staying a day and then continuing south towards Colorado.
The lake and campground had quite a few bugs. The spray kept the mosquitos away, and you just put up with the rest.
We had hoped to kayak some more the next day, but the weather wasn’t our friend. We awoke to cooler temps, wind, and quite a bit of smoke haze from several BC forest fires. It just wasn’t kayaking weather. While the day before had 10 to 15 boats on the water, we didn’t see anyone venture out until mid afternoon, and it was just a canoe or two. The sun started to peek out about that time, but it never really got nice until about dinner time. We had made the decision to pack up the kayak by then and had decided to do some hiking instead.
There were two short hikes that went out in opposite directions. Each was about 2 miles long. The first one went along the shore line and gave different views of the lake. The second hike went around to a really interesting beaver dam. The beavers had built a dam across a channel and basically divided the lake in two. The side the beavers had dammed up sat about 5 feet higher than the one we had kayaked on. It was really pretty weird looking.
Our camper proved popular today. Several people walked over to ask about it, and we spent about an hour “giving tours”.
We also made a decision about the next day’s travel. Yep, there was another Provincial Park on a lake about 170 miles down the road. That would be our plan…