OK, I can’t not post this stuff. The intersection of the Liard River and the Alaska Highway is four hours north of town, in the geographical centre of no-where. The water from the springs is hot enough to support an eerily jungle-like spread of greenery in an area that reaches -40 in the winter, and the characters who drift through or set up camp are even weirder. Here’s a brief dramatis personae:
Trapper Ray: Pretty well the definitive hotsprings legend. Built cabins over a wide area of the Liard watershed, ran a trapline, and used to own the Hotsprings Lodge. Founder of the Fur Spider Hoax (See March ’06). Once shot a moose from across a river, and carried it back in pieces across the shifting ice floes just after breakup. Was allowed by the government to shoot possibly the only Kermode bear ever observed in the Northern Rockies, because they didn’t believe that he’d seen one.
Stanley the Buffalo: Used to hang out at the Lower Lodge and watch the customers through the windows. Sometimes he would stand aimlessly in the gas station for several hours at a time.
Crazy Old Bill: Maybe not exactly crazy, but definitely a little odd since he cut down a tree onto his own head. Used to run a jade mine, which produced many green rocks, some of which, it stands to reason, may well have been jade.
Lucy: Grossly overweight stray horse that begged food off whoever would cough it up at the Hotsprings Lodge.
Kenworth the Buffalo: Still goes by the moniker he earned when he was hit by a Kenworth truck on the highway and survived. The truck was a write-off.
Ranger Al: The duty to remove fur-spider crossing signs from the highway and explain to tourists that the creatures were imaginary fell to Ranger Al. Consequently, he didn’t get along too well with Trapper Ray.
Jan: Fugitive from the FBI who just showed up at the Lodge one day and started working. Picked an assortment of wild mushrooms one day, and then disappeared for a week. Eventually hauled off by the mounties.
Cowboy Ron: Former inmate of the Kingston pen, and artisan of a still so sophisticated that it now belongs to the collections of the Penitentiary Museum.
And all this without even mentioning Toad River! Maybe one day.