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!!!

Liard Hot Springs

Sunday, August 22 - We could really smell the smoke from the forest fires last night and again this morning.  I first thought it was just a campfire, smelled like wood smoke.  But Marilyn mentioned the forest fires over on the Cassiar Highway area, and then it made sense. 

We got up this morning to more tire problems.  When we let the RV off the hydraulic jacks, Joe saw that the back tire was flat again -- the same one we had fixed in Anchorage.  So off he went with the RV to get it repaired.  Fortunately, there was a tire repair shop right in Watson Lake, so it just delayed us about an hour.  The problem was that the patch they did in Anchorage had come loose on one end.  Finally, we got on the road a little after 11:00 a.m. (after Marilyn's biscuits and gravy), and we started seeing animal poop along the road.  We are now in buffalo country, so we thought it must be from buffalo.  We came upon a small herd of horses, grazing right along the highway, so we figured out what we were seeing was horse poop, not buffalo poop.  But since I was in my "watch for buffalo" mode, I didn't even get a picture of the pretty horses.  Later, at the fuel stop, we learned that they were not wild horses, the owner just lets them graze along the highway, so I didn't feel so bad about missing that photo op.

The highway crosses back and forth between the Yukon and British Columbia 7 times in this area, but it is a really pretty drive.  There was hardly any traffic, and we had sunshine most of the time.  We crossed the Hyland River, which is a tributary of the Liard River.

Anyhow, a short time later, we came upon our first BUFFALO.

It was grazing right along the road, and we followed it for a short while.  We later came upon two other buffalo, separately, but both of them were laying down, and Joe didn't take a picture of either (they were on his side of the road). 

We made a lunch stop, and I thought I heard some stampeding buffalo headin our way, but it was just Collins.

British Columbia is a really pretty province, and this highway was in good shape.  Mazie said when they drove this back in 1999, this section was gravel.

The Liard River ran beside us for several miles.  It is a pretty emerald color, and has some rapids.  Legend has it that a band of outlaws used to attack and rob riverboats on this river.

But then the view got even better.  We came upon a black bear with 2 cubs, right beside the highway.

They were so cute, and we were thrilled to be back in bear country (where we actually can find them).  Three buffalo and 3 bears all in the same day is a good day.

Our destination today was the Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park, and we got in there about 2:30.  We all found nice, woodsy campsites, and then Joe and his 3 women headed for the Hot Springs.  The temperature ranges 70+ to 126, depending on which end you enter.

 We kinda went in in the middle, Joe and Mazie to the warmer side, Marilyn and I to the cooler side.  It was pretty toasty!  After Marilyn and I got used to the temperature, we moved over to the warmer side.  Joe, Marilyn and Mazie all headed up to the hottest end, but none of them made it.  Joe lasted the longest, but even he had to get out.

We only stayed for about 45 minutes, too hot for us old people. It had a boardwalk from the parking lot down to the springs, maybe 3/10ths of a mile walk.  Mazie and Marilyn walked from the campers, but Joe drove us over to the parking lot.  The area on either side of the boardwalk is a wetlands environment that supports more then 250 boreal forest plants, including 14 orchid species, but we didn't spot any of them.  They say moose also come in here to this wetlands area, but we didn't spot any of them either.  And, of course, this is supposedly high-traffic bear country in the campground, but we haven't spotted any of them yet either.  (We're still looking for them, though). 

Watson Lake

Saturday, August 21 - We headed down the road this morning, passing the turnoff to the Cassiar Highway.  That highway is closed due to fires, and has been for several weeks, so we were fortunate that we took that route on the way to Alaska.  Because of the recent rains, they thought it might reopen today or tomorrow.  We stopped at a nice gift shop and restaurant, and we finally got our buffalo burgers (Marilyn and I opted for hamburgers), and drove on in to Watson Lake (85 miles today), famous for its Signpost Forest, which is right along the highway. 

After we got set up at our camground, we went to the Northern Lights Interpretive Center, the only planetarium in North America featuring the myth and science of the Northern Lights, using advanced video and laser technology.  They had a post outside listing the planets and the distance to them.

They some nice pictures inside, and we watched a 50-minute video presentation inside a 100-seat "Electric Sky" theater environment.  Half of the video was on the Northern Lights, and the other half was about the science of the universe.  All very interesting.    This is a picture posted inside, but we keep hoping to get to see the real thing.  It does get dark now, so if the sky would clear we might have a chance.

Next we went over to the Signpost Forest.  Dave and Mazie happened to have a sign with them that Mazie had had made some years ago, so they dug that out to "plant."  Collins got out the drill, and Joe found some screws in our toolbox, so they prepared the sign and off we went.

This "forest" is huge, row after row of post with all kinds of signs, from everywhere.  Mazie said it had "grown" a lot since they stopped here 11 years ago.

So here David and Joe are, hanging the sign. 

Mission accomplished!

There are lots of signs of cities, and we found one from the City of Sierra Vista, signed by their previous mayor.  I spotted a t-shirt that said "Alaska to Argentina, by bicycle."  Here's another unique one.

Obviously, on our next trip through here, the rest of us will have to be better prepared.  I told Joe maybe next summer we could set up a little business here, making signs for people.  Just another idea.

After we finished here, we drove through town (short drive) and checked out the price of gas ($1.169/litre).  But Marilyn and Collins, smart people they are, stopped at the visitor center and learned that gas is less expensive down the road a ways, so we'll wait.  Marilyn offered to make biscuits and gravy for all of us tomorrow morning (Brenda, aren't you jealous), so we had an early night, still recuperating from the big party the night before.