[Klazu]

Back in September on the Labour Day long weekend me and my wife made a brief two-night visit to the small town of Princeton which is an interesting town with a long mining history.

Unfortunately the weather was very mixed on that weekend and we had but rain and shine.





The town center is pretty nice, although very quiet early in the morning. There are still some nice breakfast places in downtown worth visiting.







Vermilion Avenue is the main street of Princeton.









Princeton Museum is said to be a nice place to visit, but we actually didn't check it out. Perhaps another time.







China Ridge Trails should be an excellent place for cross-country skiing, but for hiking the trails are not that exciting and offer not many views.









As we had plenty of time, we figured why not drive to the nearby town of Tulameen. The small road there turned out to be a nice drive alongside a canyon.













As mentioned, the Princeton area is rich with mining history and the newest copper mine in BC is located in here. It is located on the aptly named Copper Mountain and has three huge open pits. Unfortunately there is no way to see into these pits without trespassing, as it is a private area.





The mine has a huge tailwater pond between two mountains. The sight made me wonder how sturdy the dam is as upon a major breach the water could wipe out whole Princeton...





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Highway 3 is the highway connecting Princeton to the Lower Mainland and Vancouver. It's a nice drive and there is quite a bit new road construction going on adding new passing lanes.

















The highway takes one through Manning Park Provincial Park where we made a brief stop. We had never noticed that there is actually a pretty spectacular scenic drive up one of the mountain face, going all the way up to 2000 meters!

At that altitude the weather was only +3 degrees above zero with low-hanging clouds, but it looked like a nice area with some amazing hiking trails in the summer!













Back in Lower Mainland the weather had improved and so ended our nice little trip. Hopefully you enjoyed.