Dawson Creek 1

Wednesday, August 25 - We got ready to leave this morning, and Collins had a dead battery in his dinghy, so he had to get the battery charger out.  Hopefully, something was just left on, since they didn't unhook the car overnight, and it will charge back up and be fine.  We were headed to Chetwynd today, the chain-saw sculpture capital of the world," and on Mazie's to-do list because of her interest in totem poles.  There is a loop road to Chetwynd, which bypasses Watson Creek But after a discussion at our rest stop, it was decided to continue on to Watson Creek, thereby completing the Alaska Highway, then driving our dinghy down to Chetwynd tomorrow.  That would also allow Collins to get his battery situation resolved.

We drove up and down lots of hills today, and finally came to some ranching and farm country.  We passed a domesticated herd of buffalo in one field, and a few cattle and horses.  They were combining wheat or barley right outside of Dawson Creek.  We talked to some hunters at our rest stop this morning, and they had gotten a bull moose, so I guess that's why I'm not seeing any -- they're killing them all!

We drove through the Peace River valley and crossed the Peace River.  Bridging the Peace River was one of the first goals of the Alaska Highway engineers in 1942, because traffic moving north from Dawson Creek was limited by this crossing, where two ferries with a capacity of 10 trucks per hour were operating.  This was the other suspension bridge on the Alaska Highway, but this one collapsed in 1957, and was replaced by the current cantilever and truss-type bridge.

There was a very nice campground/park right on the bank of this river, but we needed services and laundry facilities tonight, so we passed that one by.  Just after we got set up (2:00 p.m.), a thundershower came through, so we were fortunate that we were already off the road for the day.  We were blessed with a pretty rainbow when it stopped.

We'll be at this campground for a couple of nights to get caught up on our laundry and restock on groceries, and our side trip to Chetwynd.  When we leave here, we will cross into Alberta pretty quick, and change time zones again.  Our next major destination is Edmonton.

Fort Nelson

Tuesday, August 24 - Last night after dinner we walked down to the river with Collins and Marilyn.  Joe took his weapon to protect us.

We found a lot of pretty "Brenda" rocks there.  Collins tried to get one for her, but Marilyn said it was too much weight for the RV.

I got up early again this morning, so I walked down to the river to see if there was any wildlife about.  On the way, I passed a flatbed truck with black sand on the back, so I checked it out for gold nuggets.  No luck, still!

I collected a pocketful of rocks for Brenda last night, so today I left the rest of them there, but Brenda would have had a heyday here.  She really should fly in and start picking them up.  We passed a grass airstrip just a few miles back.

I came upon a rock formation someone had built.  I'm not sure if it was a bed or a grave (it had ferns in it), but it was interesting to see.  (I didn't check to see if someone was buried there.)

The sun was just starting to come up over the mountains, so I got a few pictures.  My picture makes the river look dark, and it wasn't, which you can see in the second picture.  It was all very pretty.

Then we hit the road, 9:00 start again, but we had a scenic view just about 3 miles down the road, Indian Head Mountain, followed a few miles later by Steamboat Mountain.

We got to Fort Nelson about 11:00, and stopped at their Heritage Museum, which had "one of the most impressive collections of antique cars in British Columbia."  It also had a lot of drilling equipment, old office equipment, tools, etc.  Joe took 77 pictures here, so I've narrowed it down to about a half dozen.

This grinding wheel is one like my grandparents had, so I thought it was picture-worthy.

And they had a stuffed "white moose," so of course we needed a picture of that.

We had lunch in town, then headed on down the road.  It got to be a long driving day, got slowed down by some road construction a couple times, and didn't get to our campground until about 5:00 p.m., put in 182 miles so everyone was worn out.  After the wildlife we saw the last two days, we had high hopes for today, but all we saw was a dead black bear, a dead deer, and finally, a live gray fox just before we quit driving for the day.

But we got great campsites, right by the Sikanni River.  I saw a few fish jump, so I'm thinking Collins needs to get his fishing pole out.

Collins never did get his fishing pole out, so the fish were safe.

Muncho Lake Area

Monday, August 23 - Today was a great day!  Fog had drifted in overnight and our campground was beautiful in the misty, early-morning light.

I walked down by the highway to get a couple pictures, and the highway was really socked in.  We weren't leaving for a couple hours, so I hoped it would clear by then.  David had us on the move this morning, with a 9:00 scheduled start.

I walked over toward the Hot Springs, and the marshes were really foggy.  I was looking for moose (or anything else that moved), but didn't see anything.

So about 5 minutes before 9:00, David started hollering on the CB that it was time to go.  We headed out, still foggy right a the intersection of the campground and highway (maybe the hot springs always creates fog in this area), and within our first mile we came to the Liard River Bridge, the only remaining suspension bridge (1143 ft.) on the Alaska Highway, built in 1943.  It was being worked on, as were many of the bridges in Canada, so we had to stop.

We got the green light and pulled onto the bridge, and there was a guy driving a bobcat tractor heading toward the other end.  Suddenly, he comes flying back toward us.  I said to Joe, is he going to stop?

He stopped right in front of us and got off, yelling "back up, back up, you have to back up, there's buffalo coming across the bridge!"  He was very excited.  Joe told him we couldn't back up, we had a tow vehicle on behind.  I guess this construction worker had not run into this problem before because it took a while to convince him.  Another guy was trying to get David and Collins backed up.  Collins was barely on the bridge, and he did back up just a little.  Marilyn got in the dinghy and tried to keep it from jack-knifing.  So our guy turned his bobcat a little sideways, right against our RV, so the buffalo wouldn't damage it, and the two construction guys looked for a safe place for themselves.  And here comes the buffalo.

They herded the buffalo into the other lane and he ran right beside us!

I think the construction guys actually thought a whole herd was coming, but only one came across.  We came through that adventure unscathed, but it was quite an exciting start to our day. Mazie said she kept tooting the horn at it, I guess so it wouldn't ram their Dodge, but none of us had any problem with it. Just a little ways down the road, maybe a couple miles, we came upon a small herd of about 20 buffalo, some still bedded down.

We could see there was a larger herd just a few hundred feed further, so after several pictures there, we eased on down to take pictures of these.  I counted 64 in this group, and probably missed some that were in the trees.  There were several babies in this group.

Finally we moved on, and this was one of the prettiest drives we've had, and believe me, we've been on some pretty drives.  Joe drove about 35 mph most of the day so he could take in the views as he drove (and most of the time, he was in the correct lane).  We are back in the Canadian Rockies now, and they are breath-taking.

We stopped at Muncho Lake, one of Mazie's favorite spots from their trip in 1999.  And it was certainly beautiful. The lake is 7 miles long and a mile wide, and very clear. The water is such a pretty emerald color, and the lake reflects the mountains and clouds around it.

After we loaded up from there, we came upon our first caribou, a small group of 4 (unfortunately, there was a dead one alongside the road, but it didn't look like this morning's kill).

We saw two more caribou later on, but we didn't get a picture of them.
We crossed Toad River, another pretty emerald-colored river, and later saw 3 small grouse on the side of the road.  We thought David hit one of them, but he said he straddled it and it survived.

Our lunch stop was beside "folded mountain," mountains with flat-lying layers buckled like folds, caused when the continent of North America began to move westward 175 million years ago.

The afternoon scenery was as good as this morning's.

There are lots of wildlife in British Columbia, so we were looking for everything and anything.  We finally came upon a small herd of stone sheep, licking the minerals out of the gravel at a pull-off (very convenient for us).  There was a little one that was so cute I just wanted to pet it (Kaylee, you would have like this one).

We passed another beautiful lake, Summit Lake.

And finally got to our campground, another provincial park, at Testa River.  We had a beautiful drive of 132 miles today, and saw lots of buffalo, some caribou, and some stone sheep.  A good day!!!