Nestled in the heart of British Columbia, Quesnel is a city rich in history and surrounded by natural beauty.

Located in the Cariboo Regional District, at the confluence of the Fraser and Quesnel River, this is a place where the past meets the present. It offers visitors a unique blend of outdoor adventures and historical exploration. Whether you’re seeking the thrill of the wilderness or the charm of a small-town atmosphere, Quesnel has something to offer every traveler.

At this point in the winter season, I’m often headed south along with thousands of other Canadian “snowbirds” opting to stay for a couple of weeks in Palm Springs, California – but not this time.

This year, I’ve decided to hang around and brave the cold, snow and sometimes dull, cloudy days that we get in the Okanagan Valley. While it’s been a fairly mild winter (thankfully) to date, I did feel the need to “get away from it all” for at least a short break and take a staycation, unwinding just outside my own four walls.

I arrived in Cranbrook, a city of about 18,500 residents, in the southeast corner of British Columbia, just before the sunset. Traffic was light as I pulled into the Prestige Rocky Mountain Resort, my home for the next two days.

Stepping up to the front desk in the lobby, I was greeted with a smile and a “we’ve got a treat for you.” When I was handed the key to my room, I was instructed to head through the doors toward the back of the hotel. Not sure where I was going, I stepped outside and stared at a railway car sitting in the backyard of the hotel. “Hmmmm, this looks interesting,” I thought to myself.

I never gave it much thought until I was driving over a short bridge that connects Prince Rupert to the mainland that I realized this coastal city was situated on an island – Kaien Island to be exact.

Just prior to the bridge, a few kilometres away, is a pull off on the Yellowhead Highway (Hwy. 16) leading into Prince Rupert. A small, southern arm off Prudhomme Lake is a great spot to stop and pull out the camera, especially given that this was a sunny day. The views were spectacular and so easy to access.

I pulled into Golden, in mid-afternoon after driving north from Radium Hot Springs that morning. It was a beautiful drive through the mountains, with the sun bursting through clouds, bathing the steep terrain in shafts of golden light fingers.

Golden is nestled in the Rocky Mountain Trench, built around the confluence of the Columbia and Kicking Horse rivers, surrounded by three different mountain ranges (most notably the Purcell Mountains and Rocky Mountains) and five National Parks: Yoho National Park, Banff National Park, Jasper National Park, Glacier National Park, and Kootenay National Park.

The drive through to the area they call “The Valley of a Thousand Peaks” was both stunning and a little tense. Stunning due to the incredible mountains that border the highway to Radium Hot Springs and tense due to the weather – a mixture of wet snow, slush and ice, which I hadn’t expected to come up against. It was well worth my 5 and-a-half hour drive through the mountains to get to some of the most beautiful scenery you can imagine.

My first stop in the area was to Radium Hot Springs, a small town located on the “warm” side of the Canadian Rockies.

As I pulled into the northern BC town of Smithers, a man was standing waist-high in the Bulkley River hoping to pull in one of the large steelheads this town is famous for. I wandered down by the stream and chatted to a gentleman who was teaching his son how to fly fish. “Tourists come from all over the world to fish in what we call Rainbow Alley,” he told me. “We’ve got rainbows, spring salmon, coho, sockeye and pinks along with the steelheads that are highly-prized.”

An American, originally from California, I wondered why he had moved north, away from the sun and beaches. “Look around some,” he told me “and you wouldn’t ask that question.” I left him, coaching his son on the proper wrist technique to getting his line out into the water and headed for the Prestige Hudson Bay Lodge.

It’s a bold statement to put “Beautiful BC” on a license plate, but there’s good reason for it – we actually live in one of the most stunningly beautiful places on the planet and if you’ve done any traveling around the province you’ve not only seen the beauty, but also the diversity. The different physical aspects of my home province was evident as I hopped into my SUV and headed off from Kelowna, taking a northern route up Highway 16. Over the 8 hours I was slated to drive to Prince George (my first stop in a northern BC tour), I drove through farmlands; by fresh-water lakes; the mighty Fraser River and countless forested areas. Still, my first stop was to be an area I hadn’t yet visited – an ancient rainforest, accessible just off the highway.

Salmon Arm is a city in the Southern Interior of British Columbia with a population of almost 17 and-a-half thousand people. This number swells in the summer with visitors from Alberta (Calgary), Vancouver and Asia, all heading to this small city located on the shores of Shuswap Lake. A tourist town, with many beaches, as well as camping facilities and houseboat rentals, I discovered that Salmon Arm is home to the longest wooden wharf in North America.

Even though Salmon Arm is only about an hour-and-a-half from my home, I’ve never really made the easy road trip to see what the draw was – other than the hundreds of houseboats one can rent on the lake. I decided to go and explore the area and become a tourist for a couple of days, exploring the back country roads and seeking out activities I don’t normally have a chance to do – horseback riding, fishing and meandering through an old, restored village.

The roads were, thankfully, pretty clear sailing all the way from our starting point in Kelowna, BC to Nelson, in the southern part of the province. I was headed for a few days of ‘ski-cation’, about to spend four days in the famed Selkirk and Monashee mountains of British Columbia, and I was pumped to see dry pavement, until the last hour of my trip. When the snow did hit, I not only expected it, but relished in the fact that the hills would be carpeted with fresh powder. Unfortunately, I was on the road before the sanders or plows were out. Still, the ride wasn’t too bad, considering we were still having a very, long Canadian winter. I kept my eyes focused on the road ahead and only when I checked in, opened the door to my suite, did I finally breathe a sigh of relief and had a great, happy surprise at my room at the Prestige Lakeside Resort in Nelson.