Exploring an Abandoned Ghost Town Hidden in the Woods | S1E07

So these houses were housing the families of the miners that were working in the gold mines here. But in 1971, the gold price plummeted and everybody left. Let's check out the upstairs. Hey. My truck just made a funny noise, but it's not making it right now. Yeah. Can you just listen while I drive forward? Sure. Is that okay? Yeah. My journey around the planet begins at North America's most Northern drivable point. The plan is to ride through Canada and America before crossing over to Europe. From there, I'll make my way through the Middle East and Asia. After island hopping through Indonesia, it'll be Australia and finally New Zealand. The end of my journey will be marked by the Southern most point of the South Island. I'm calling it the big spiral, and this is act two to an Alaskan beginning. Good morning. It's day two of the trip and we're heading North again. Let me show you the map. So we'll go over to the, I'll call it the itchy map because it's very Itchy Boots inspired. So let me just show you what we did yesterday first. So we were here in Abbotsford, drove up to Mission, over to Doodney, Harrison Mills, up this way, up past Harrison Lake, to Sloquette Hot Springs there. We'll keep going North. I believe we'll pass Lillooet Lake here, up to Mount Currie, Pemberton, and then we'll head up the Pemberton Valley here, and we'll get to Braylorn. So there's a bunch of abandoned buildings there that I want to check out, and then we'll see how far we get. But Gold Bridge, and then I believe this is Carpenter Lake here. There is a bunch of camping there, so I may camp there tonight. So once we get past Pemberton and towards the Gold Bridge area, it'll be fairly remote again, and actually this is the South Chilcotin region, and this is one of the most, my favorite regions in BC. Lots of great mountain biking there, and the mountains are absolutely gorgeous there. I'm really excited to head up there, so let's get going. All right, on the road again. My thought of reaching Pemberton yesterday was pie in the sky, for sure, because I'm basically only halfway there from Harrison. So, but today I'm starting a lot sooner. It's 7.45 right now, which is a great time to start because it's a lot cooler right now. Yesterday I started at noon, and it was just, oh my God, it's so hot. So yesterday I thought I had the campsite to myself, but some people came in, and they turned out to be so nice, and yeah, I basically spent the night with them, and it's funny, like complete strangers, but then you have these heart-to-heart conversations about life, and I haven't had a conversation like that in a while, and it's quite nice, actually. So, and amazingly, one of them, she wasn't on her bike, but she's ridden solo down to South America and stuff on her motorbike, and I feel like that's just, it must be a good sign for my trip, right? To meet someone who's done that. Get some gas. All right, well, Pemberton is now behind us, and we're back on gravel, and we're heading towards the Hurley, which it's kind of famous for flat tires, actually. I've never had a flat tire on it myself, but yeah, well, we'll see. Now that I've said that, it should be good, but on the other side, we're gonna visit a ghost town called Braylorn with a whole bunch of abandoned buildings. It was a gold mining town. It's kind of cool, actually, because BC is, you know, Canada is a fairly young country, and we don't really have the deep history of Europe or China or Japan, you know? But, you know, we do have a few hundred years under our belt, so we get these kind of booming bus towns from mining or other resources in these weird remote spots. Oh, so dusty. All right, well, this is the Hurley. Time to start climbing. Oh. It's so at peace here. It's so beautiful. All right, I gotta admit something again. I flew the drone into a bunch of trees. I didn't mean to. The problem is I was flying it sideways, and the drone doesn't have any proximity sensors sideways. I got so lucky. Basically, it was just flying inside these trees, and I was lucky enough to be able to fly it out of the trees. I gotta take it easy with the drone. I'm trying to get all these cool shots, but all my footage is still on it. I haven't taken the footage off, so if I lose the drone, I also lose the footage. Anyways, I gotta do better about this. Don't be stupid. Hey. Hi. How's it going? Good, how are you? Good. I'm just heading down. Apparently my truck just made a funny noise, but it's not making it right now. Yeah. Can you just listen while I drive forward? Sure. Is that okay? Yeah. Thank you, because otherwise I don't know what to... Wow. Thank you. Yeah, no problem. It's coming from the back? That side, I thought. Okay. Oh. Is it that? That's the sound? It's front right, I think. Oh, yeah. Okay. Is there something jammed in my brakes? I can just look quick, see if there's something under there, yeah. It's a new sound? Just like, yeah, like 20 meters back, yeah. Yeah. I'm Eric, by the way. Carolyn. Nice to meet you. What are you doing today? Riding my motorbike, Norris. Yeah. Not a bad place to be. Yeah. It definitely sounds from, oh, it's leaking. Oh. Brake fluid? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. That's your shock. Like it? The net? It looks like it's coming from your shock. Right. Maybe not. The shock's pretty new. Oh, yeah. It's coming from the top of your shock, just up here. Okay. Yeah. Oh, who installed it? My mechanic on Salisbury, yeah. Recently? Yeah. Yeah, because it's rubbing against the CV joint here. Okay. So, you're definitely doing it wrong. Right. Yeah. I, probably when you drive it. Are you saying you're brave on, or? Yeah, I'm saying brave on, but I'm going to have to go down to Starbucks today. Oh. Okay. Oh, I'm going back that way, I guess, today, which is all right. Yeah, I wouldn't- No, I'm not. Do it early right now, you know? Okay. Thank you very much for stopping. Yeah, no problem. Hope you come up with a solution, but that shock is definitely leaking. It's going to need to be replaced. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, no problem. Have a good one. Wow, that was interesting. Her strut is rubbing on her CV joint on the front and it looks like it was installed improperly or something broke or something, so. Yeah, you don't want me to follow you or anything? Okay. Have a good one. Oh, just got to, I guess this is Braylorn. Bradian. Maybe these are the abandoned buildings? Yeah, it must be. So these houses were housing the families of the miners that were working in the gold mines here. And actually the gold mines were some of the most prolific mines in Canada at the time. But in 1971, the gold price plummeted and the mines were not sustainable anymore and everybody left. But the thing is these buildings are somewhat special because in 1997, a family came by that liked mining history and they decided to put new roofs on the buildings as well as apparently some siding and some paint. So they protected them against the elements. So they went right away. Really interesting projects because most mine sites most of these towns, they'll just, you know, rot away. This town is now 50 years since everybody left and it, well, doesn't look amazing but they're still standing. A lot of these doors are still open. So, or maybe they've been smashed open but if you look inside, like it's pretty good condition. Like actually that timber, like it almost looks new. I wonder if that was part of the kind of restoration cause it looks pretty good in here. Makes me wonder about asbestos though. All right, I'm going to walk in this one. But it's actually like really quite amazing shape. So, oh yeah, there's like a sink here and everything. All the paint is peeling on the ceilings. There's even a basement. The floor is definitely rotting there. So I won't go too far, but let's check out the upstairs. Cool on the floor. Wow, yeah, it's like a beautiful blue paint on this room. It wouldn't have been a bad place to live. Like it's a really beautiful area. It's just the matter of being employed, you know? So, yeah, this would have been someone's home. So I guess the chimney was here, but where's the, is that just in the basement? You would have thought there would have been a fireplace here somewhere, but yeah, there's supposed to be 22 houses, but some are just foundations like this one. It's like a, there's a bed spring down there, but I'm not sure how many I count standing. I feel like it's probably around 10, but I wonder if they're all the same design. Like then they just built the same house 22 times. Let's see if this one's the same. Oh, this one still has flooring. Maybe I don't want to walk on that. Maybe I'll walk. Oh, maybe that's why they put that metal there. I can walk on the metal. But I guess this is a similar layout because you had the chimney there. Oh yeah, and the sink is there. Oh yeah, it's totally the same layout. Quite a beautiful backyard. But yeah, you can see the difference the roofs make because that one clearly did not get a new roof and the ones next to it did. And they're quite a bit nicer inside. Definitely weathered the elements a bit better. All right, bye bye ghost town. Oh, there are a couple more there. Those are a different style a little bit. But yeah, it's interesting that someone would put, you know, spend money on restoring houses like that or at least, you know, kind of protecting them. So next we're going to head down to Gold Bridge. I don't really need fuel, but I'm going to top up anyways because I'm a bit paranoid about that. You know, give me more options later. Should I choose to go for a longer ride? And I bet they have cold drinks there too. That was the lady that had the problem with the strut, I believe. There's a deer in the bushes there. Oh, this was silly. The humble town of Gold Bridge. Hello, how are you? Not too bad, a little warm. Yeah, it's a KLX 300 with a kit on it. Yeah, with a big tank on it. How many liters? Uh, 18. 18? Yeah. Really, after all this, it's only 18 liters. Well, stock was seven, so. Oh, I know, stock is stupid. They're all like that. Yeah, totally. But that is 20. That's pretty good. Is that a deer 650? Yeah. Yeah, this looks brilliant. Yeah, it's not bad. I haven't actually put it to empty yet, but it should be over 500 kilometers on this tank. It looks amazing. Yeah, it's good. I like it. Yeah. Cool, see you later. Yeah, have a good ride. Thank you very much. Is it me or does that thermometer say 38 Celsius or over 100 Fahrenheit? All right, let's get some fuel. All right, let's see how this thing works. Number three. All right, so the nice thing about BC is there's so many of these free recreation sites and they're often really good. I don't see anybody here. Oh, there's somebody. Oh, it's the same guy that I talked to. The guy with the DR650. I just had a nap and I feel a lot better for it because today was such a long day and it's only the second day too. What am I complaining about? But it was a pretty long day but we got to see a lot of cool stuff. And also the ghost town is pretty interesting too because how often do you get to see a ghost town? A pretty interesting story behind it as well. But let's check out the progress we've made today. And I think it's a lot more than I made yesterday. So I'm pretty happy about that. So this morning we started the hot springs and then we kind of went like this. Went back like this, followed the river, up the river and then crossed it here. I guess that was Lillooet Lake plus Lillooet River, I think. Then went up like this and over to Pemberton. Up the Pemberton Valley, then taking the Hurley. Made it to Braylorn and then to Gold Bridge. Crossed over the lake here and I'm over here somewhere. Tomorrow's going to be really cool because we're going to go to a place I've been wanting to go to for a long time and never have been. But that'll be in the next video. So if you want to see that, maybe I'll see you there and maybe you'll subscribe to make sure you don't miss it. Who knows? But anyways, thanks for watching and I'll see you next time.