Waking up in Lillooet after a pretty eventful and long Day 27, we finally got to see where we were! Wow! What a really great place to put a town!

We grabbed some morning coffees and got moving. In the first 15 minutes of travel we managed to encounter two deer in town and made the wrong turn twice. Eventually we got ourselves headed in the right direction!

This drive may have been the peak of picturesque driving we have done thus far. The views were fantastic. We took lots of photos and videos. There’s going to be too many to share in this blog post.

Our first stop was 20 minutes up the road at a look out point that overlooks a railway tunnel carved into the mountain side. Unfortunately the lookout spot appears to now be on private land, and the owners have strategically placed barriers JUST before the point where you can actually see the tunnel. If you don’t mind dabbling in a bit of trespassing, I suppose you could walk around the barriers and view the tunnel. But don’t let us lead you down the path towards a life of civil misdemeanours!

Driving east you encounter a lot of varied BC terrain. You start by exiting the Coast Mountains and start heading into the Interior Plateau. At Cache Creek we kept heading south, instead of east, so that we had an opportunity to see a massive open-pit copper mine in BC. A couple of decades ago this area was receiving half of all mining investment in Canada to help extract the deposits found here. The views here were pretty neat, with the bright white tailing pond at the north end, and massive dug-out areas south of there.

Continuing east and then north we drove through Kamloops and grabbed some lunch. Kamloops is also nestled in a really picturesque piece of Canada. The area here again is unique in its character, given that it’s in a semi-arid desert-like climate, and you can see it with the scrubby flora and dry ground. There are no craggy mountains here, but large rolling hills.

Heading further east we weaved north and south through the mountain passes. Through Salmon Arm, Shuswap, Balmoral, and stopping at Craigellachie to checkout the Last Spike historical center. This is the place where the ceremonial ‘last spike’ of the Canadian Pacific Railway was struck, thus completing the connection of the east coast of Canada all the way to the west coast.

Continuing further east we wizzed by the outskirts of Revelstoke and then up between the mountains and through Rogers Pass. Unfortunately it had started to rain at this point, so we were reluctant to stop and checkout this other significant landmark, where this important mountain-pass was discovered and used to route the Canadian Pacific Railway through the mountains and deep into British Columbia.

Fortunately the rain cleared shortly thereafter, as we rolled down into the Rocky Mountain Trench, nestled between the Rocky Mountains and Columbia Mountains. Here we stopped at our overnight stop, Golden BC.

For dinner we walked down the road to Q’s Restaurant, a local place for Japanese / Korean cuisine. Just as we arrived there was an awesome view of the sun shining over the mountain tops through the rain clouds.

The food at Q’s was good, not great. Charlie ranked his Korean-style burger a negative one-star (-⭐) and the rest of the dishes ranged from three to four stars. Nevertheless, the restaurant was VERY busy and we were lucky to get a seat before closing.

With another day done, we hit the hay to rest up for the drive through the Rocky Mountains!

Starting Location & Time	Lillooet, British Columbia – 9:18 am
Ending Location & Time	Golden, British Columbia – 8:26 pm
Total Kilometers	527 km
Total Time	11h 8m