Similar to my trip to Berg Lake, Seth and I took a whole week off when we visited South Chilcotin Provincial Park, with our backpacking trip to Taylor Creek only being one part of the trip. After we finished the hike, we returned to Lillooet and then had two days of road tripping to get from Lillooet to Keremeos, where I’d be meeting Carolyn to hike in Cathedral Provincial Park. We spent the first night at Seton Dam Campsite outside Lillooet. It’s a first-come-first-serve campground that’s managed by BC Hydro. It was surprisingly busy considering it was a Tuesday night, but it’s a nice site.

We made hash browns and eggs at the campsite and then packed up to go adventuring for the day. Our first stop was just up the road to do the Seton Lake Viewpoint Trail. It’s a short trail, less than 1km round trip, that goes up to a viewpoint that overlooks the road and Seton Lake. It’s weirdly popular on instagram because there’s an cool curve on Duffey Lake Road that people like to photograph. Personally, I don’t really get the attraction, but we were close to it, and it’s so short, I figured, why not. Maybe I’m wrong though because Sadie seemed really into it! She seemed to like watching all the cars zoom by, so we hung around for a bit, heading back to the car before it got too hot.

Our next stop was to visit the lake itself. I’d been to Lillooet once before in the winter, but I didn’t stop at the lake. It’s a dammed lake and BC Hydro has developed it into a really nice rec site. You can paddle on the lake, but it does appear to get quite windy, even early in the day. Lillooet was forecasting to reach temperatures of 35 degrees celsius, so our plan was to enjoy a nice little swim. It was early in the day and we had the beach mostly to ourselves. We didn’t find the water too cold, even though it was early. We ended up having the nicest swim and lounged on the beach for a while before continuing on to our next destination for the day.

I have this book at home called “125 hot spots in British Columbia”. I had a look at it before the trip and was intrigued by Marble Canyon Provincial Park. It wasn’t on the most direct route, but it was close enough to Lillooet, that I decided it was a worthy detour, especially since I was travelling with Seth (a biologist). It ended up being the highlight of our two day road trip, so I’m glad we added it to the itinerary.

Marble Canyon Provincial Park is located north of Lillooet on Highway 99. It’s a series of lakes and has a frountcountry campground. But what really makes this park popular is what’s below the surface of the lakes. Pavilion Lake is home to microbialites, a type of sedimentary deposit that bands together overtime to create freshwater stromatolites. These are underwater structures that solidify into formations, similar to stalagmites, and it’s one of the few places in the world where you can find them. There are best viewed using scuba diving equipment, but it is possible to see them with a snorkel.

Seth remembered learning about the lake in university and was excited about the prospect of visiting. However, our first stop was to Crown Lake, which is where the campground and day use area are located. There’s a few picnic tables located down by the beach, so we cooked up some pesto pasta for lunch while taking turns swimming in the lake. It’s a small lake, with a waterfall located on the opposite shore. I’d planned to swim over there to see it, but while we were eating, we noticed a black bear hanging out on the other side eating berries, so I scrapped that plan.

After lunch, we drove back to Pavilion Lake to look for stromatolites. There’s a few pull outs along the road where you can walk down to the water. We found a nice spot and did a little bit of snorkeling. Regardless of whether we saw stromatolites or not, it was a nice place to snorkel. We took turns swimming while someone hung out with Sadie on the shore. We didn’t see any large stromatolites and we’re honestly not sure if we saw them at all, but Seth thinks we were still able to see the deposits along the rocks in the area, even if they weren’t large structures. We’re not scuba divers, so we were happy with the experience regardless.

After we’d had our fill of the lake, we continued towards Cache Creek, stopping at Horsting’s Farm Market along the way. It’s a huge market with fresh lemonade, ice cream, an apple orchard, and lots of treats. We had the fresh lemonade, which was delicious, as well as a few snacks. I learned after the fact that Cache Creek is also home to the famous Desert Hills Taco Stand. We did see it, and now regret not stopping for it, so hopefully next time!

We drove Highway 97C to Merritt, which I’d never driven before, and discovered the existence of a huge copper mine off the highway. If you’ve ever driven this highway, you’ll know what I’m talking about it. It basically looks like a giant salt flat. It’s cool to see, but it was so unexpected that it really took us by surprise. With the introduction of tariffs this year, I’ve been learning more about our exports and found it interesting to learn that almost half of Canada’s copper is produced in BC and that the mine we passed, Highland Valley, is actually the largest copper mine in Canada.

Our final stop for the night was Lundbom Lake Rec Site, located just outside of Merritt. There’s a bunch of rec sites in the area and they’re all first-come-first-serve, but have full time BC Parks Staff on site. It’s a couple kilometres of driving on gravel road to access the site, but it’s well maintained. Bring cash to pay for your site if you visit. It’s quite a nice site and has more than 100 campsites, but apparently it fills up quickly on the weekends, so plan accordingly. The highlight for me was sitting on the dock and watching the sun set over the lake.

On the last day of our road trip, we drove from Lundbom to Cathedral Provincial Park. It’s not a long drive, so we took our time with lots of stops. We made a quick visit to Kentucky-Alleyne Provincial Park, which is a very popular frontcountry site. Honestly, I thought Lundbom was nicer, but it’s cool having 2 lakes back to back at Kentucky-Alleyne. We also stopped at Allison Lake, which was an interesting lake. It’s a sandy beach lake, but the sand is very silty, almost like clay, so you sink down into it and it stirs up a lot of sediment with every step. I kind of got the feeling that Allison Lake used to be a lot nicer. The water level of the lake has clearly receded a lot in recent years, and it had the vibe of a washed up beach town. It was nice, but not super memorable.

We had lunch in Princeton and then spent a few hours exploring some of the attractions. It was disappointing to discover that very few small towns have any dog friendly restaurants. We had a similar experience in both Lillooet and Princeton – there were restaurants with patios, but none of them were dog friendly, so it was a struggle with Sadie. We ended up eating at a taco restaurant that had a table and some chairs outside.

In the afternoon, we did a short walk along the Kettle Valley Rail Trail, which is an iconic trail that extends hundreds of kilometres along the old railway track. This section of trail has an old tunnel and you used to be able to hike to the Red Ochre Bluffs, but the bridge was washed out in 2021 and it hasn’t been replaced yet. It was cool to visit the tunnel, but it is a little eerie. We also walked over to Swan Lake Wildlife Refuge, which is a protected area that’s supposed to be good for birdwatching, but it’s pretty underwhelming in the middle of a hot day (unsurprisingly).

From there, our only plan was to drive to the trailhead for Cathedral, but I was really keen to take a river bath before starting my next hike, since we’d been camping for 5 nights at this point. This trip was a bit different than my normal summer trips in that I didn’t book any campsites and we planned to just hit up first-come-first-serve campgrounds along the way. So our plan was pretty fluid. This is easy to do during the weekdays, but I still recommend booking campsites where possible on the weekends, or planning to arrive early to campgrounds. Some areas of the province have more rec site options than others and the area around Princeton had tons of options! So if you’re ever looking to do some leisurely camping, Highway 3 between Princeton and Keremeos is a great location.

All this is to say that I decided to target Bromley Rock Provincial Park as a good location for my river bath. It’s located right off the highway outside of Princeton and it has a frontcountry campground and a day use area. It’s a really nice river pool for swimming and it was surprisingly busy for a Thursday afternoon. If you go to the far end of the parking lot where the outhouses are, you can walk down another trail towards the river (away from the pool). It’s not as nice for swimming, but it’s more private, though people do fish along the river. We found a more secluded spot and took the opportunity to use my pocket shower to clean up a bit. Smelling much better than before, we continued on to Keremeos to pick up some Thai food for supper.

The final part of our route was to take Ashnola Road down to the Cathedral Park entrance. Cathedral is a remote park that is most well known for the Rim Trail. It’s an alpine, desert-like environment filled with lots of mountain goats and breathtaking stone structures and monuments. When I told the park operator at Lundbom that I was going to Cathedral Park, he described his experience there as “spiritual”. It’s a somewhat popular park, but not crowded because of the limited access. It’s ~15km to hike into the core area of the park, which used to be home to 3 campgrounds and a lodge. In the past, most people would access the park core area by shuttle bus through the lodge, avoiding over 1000m of elevation gain.

Unfortunately, half of the park burned down in 2023 when a forest fire tore up the valley all the way to the lodge before they were able to contain it. The lodge is still standing, but 2 of the campgrounds burned down, along with the bridge that connected the lodge to Ashnola Road. The park re-opened this past summer to hikers, but the lodge is still closed until the bridge is repaired, so your only option is to hike into the park.

Two back-to-back hiking trips did not interest Seth, so he was dropping me in Cathedral and Carolyn would be joining me to hike for 4 more days. There are two rec sites along the road, one is right at the Lakeview Trailhead, and the other is a few kilometres away, called Buckhorn. We camped at Lakeview, but it only has a single walk-in site and no outhouse, so I wouldn’t recommend it. We ended up just camping in the parking lot since we were the only ones there. I didn’t drive down to Buckhorn, but from the map, it looks like a more traditional rec site. It was a bit of an anti-climatic end to our road trip, but we had one night along the river before starting our hike the following day. Stay tuned to hear about my experience in Cathedral Provincial Park!