Sharp's Travels

We’re off to Barkerville this morning at 9am.

Barkerville is a typical gold rush boomtown; a jumble of log and false-fronted shanties along a narrow, muddy street. It has over 125 heritage buildings, period room displays and museums.

As soon as we got there we headed for Goldfield Bakery for a fresh, frosted fritter pastry. We looked around town a bit, and took a few pictures before heading to the reception building to begin our guided town tour with our historic interpreter. The people there were dressed in costumes of that era and did an excellent job of telling us all about how Barkerville was established.

After our tour we had a ½ hour break to look around a bit more and then we took in a little skit on mining. We got to see the Cornish Waterwheel in action and learn how they mined in the Caribou. The actors for this skit were so funny. They made their 40 minute presentation go by really fast.

There was also a big Chinese settlement in Barkerville. We toured their section of town and got a few pictures.

It was a must to take in the Court Session on Early Justice. For that we had to walk 1 mile on a dirt road, through the woods to the court house in Richfield. They had a sign up “BEWARE OF BEARS”. I was very nervous walking on that road. We met up with a few more people and the comfort of the crowd made me feel more at ease. The court house is the only building still standing in the town of Richfield. The actors did ok with the court house skit. Then there was that walk back. We had a number of people to walk with and it went much better—it was all down hill! We heard thunder and thought we’d get wet before we got back---we were lucky. Gay went out to the truck to get our rain ponchos and umbrellas and just got back inside when it began to rain. If we thought the streets were muddy before, they were terrible now.

We took in the movie on the gold rush and the museum at the reception building and by then the rain almost let up. We ran through the rain drops over to pan for gold. We both found a few FLAKES each!

At 3:15pm we took the historical tour of Chinatown. It was raining yet so they gave the tour inside one of the buildings. We got the lowdown on how the Chinese got to Barkerville. She was hard to understand but we filled in the blanks.

We had to finish our tour of the stable area and then hurried over for our stagecoach ride. The coach was stopped in the mud so it was very difficult to get in. They gave us a 15 minute ride around town.

We decided to eat supper at Wake-Up-Jake Restaurant. We had corn beef and cabbage. It was so-so.

We headed back to the 5th wheel to get dried off and warmed up.

For pictures of the day see album: Barkerville 8-20-08