May 2007

We drive an hour to reach Dawson Creek, BC. Not a scenic drive, but it's short. We do see several elk and a wolf on the way, but this is high prairie and so not real picturesque.

The RV park we pick (actually, I pick) is a dump. We don't realize this til after we pay for two nights, so we're making the best of it. We do all get a laugh when I try to figure out where the creek is that this park supposedly overlooks. I re-read the description "overlooks Dawson Creek" and realize that is the town's name, not an actual creek :-) I also am hoping that their satellite TV hook-up includes Fox so I can watch the finals of American Idol tomorrow night, but they only get 6 stations. Only two of the stations are American, CNN and Speed (yes, they get the NASCAR station as one of their 6 stations).

We drive into town to check out the Dawson Creek visitor center and museum. And of course, GET OUR PHOTO TAKEN AT MILE 0 SIGN FOR THE ALASKAN HIGHWAY!!!

We watch the hour-long, very detailed (read 'boring') account about building the Alaskan Highway. Jere thought it was very interesting -- to each their own. Then walk to downtown Dawson Creek. They have the original Mile 0 post (re-constructed) downtown so people can have their picture taken beside it without having to walk through a very busy traffic circle (in it's original location).

And we also take some pics of the Alaska Hotel...very picturesque, but the downtown is kindof dead, as are many downtowns in small towns.

I collect Christmas ornaments when we travel and am looking for an Alaska Highway ornament. The visitor center said to check out the Mile 0 Gift shop at the Dawson Mall, so we drive over there. The place looks fairly deserted, but we go inside and find that there is no such store as the Mile 0 gift shop. Oh well...

We make a quick stop at a Ducks Unlimited bird sanctuary outside of town and return to the Northern Lights RV Park. And now I'm typing up my blog at 8:30pm and the sun is as bright as mid-afternoon....very odd and I know it's going to keep getting lighter later and later as we continue north.

Travel day....heading north on Highway 97. We see 3 black bears, including a cub and our first MOOSE!

We stop in Prince George for some donuts and coffee at Horton's (a Canadian donut chain). They are nowhere near as good as Krispy kreme donuts. I'm not sure how they made those Krispy Kreme donuts in Washington, but they were incredibly delicious. We are not impressed with the town of Prince George -- it smells. I think they have a lot of lumber factories here and they must pollute the air.

We pull into the visitors center at Prince George and someone pulls up beside us and asks us if we are lost. He says the visitors center doesn't open til next week and this part of town has been taken over by crackheads. So we leave. We drive much north of town and stop at a rest stop for a picnic lunch.

As we head north to travel over the Rocky Mtns, some of the mountains still have quite a bit of snow on then. The lake is still partially frozen and snow covered. Very pretty.

We stop at Chetwyn, BC. They also claim to be the Chain Saw Sculpting Capitol of the World.

We check out their chain saw sculptures and then have dinner. After dinner I start trying to make some window coverings for our bedroom windows -- it stays light past 9pm now and within a few days we'll be farther north and it will be light til 10pm. Our shades filter the light but do not block the light. Not sure if that is going to bother me at night or not, but thought I'd start finding ways to block the light in our bedroom in case the daylight at midnight is going to bother me.

The sun has come out after last night's rain, so we stop in at the lumber industry tower in Quesnel and the farmers market in Quesnel (British Columbia) before leaving for our hour drive to Barkerville, British Columbia. Quesnel has several lumber mills and factories related to the lumber industry. There are tens of thousands of pine logs stacked at various places in town.

On the way to Barkerville we come upon a grizzly bear on the side of the road scrounging for roots, so we stop and watch it for several minutes. Our loud diesel doesn't seem to bother it.

Barkerville was the center of the British Columbia gold rush in the 1860s. In its' heydey it was the largest city west of Chicago and north of San Francisco with a population of 10,000. Then, as with most gold rush towns, it became a ghost town. In the 60s the British Columbia government reconstructed the town and it's now run as a historical park.

We spend time walking around the town and tag along on a walking tour of the town, explained by a costumed guide who protrays one of the women who lived in the town. She is great and makes the park interesting.

Her tour stops at the end of town where Chinatown begins. Almost half of the people who lived in Barkerville were Chinese immigrants from the Hong Kong area.

So we go to take the Chinatown tour with a guide, but soon after it starts, it starts to sleet! We go inside and listen to the rest of her tour and watch the sleet change to snow. We probably get an inch of snow during the hour-long talk about Chinatown. This guide, who portrays a woman living in town in the late 1800s but admits she is actually a social historian by trade, is just as wonderful as the first tour guide. We learn A LOT about the Chinese immigration to North America and the gold rush.

I try to take pictures of the snow but they didn't show up very well. Just take my word that it was snowing really hard. By the time the 'tour' is over, the snow/freezing rain slows down. We finish looking at a couple buildings, but then the cold gets the best of us and we hurry to the warm truck.

The sun eventually does come out again as we get close to the RV. I almost wish it had continued snowing/raining so it would remain cloudy. It is light here til at least 9pm. The clouds last night made it darker a little earlier. Then the sun is up by 5am. We have started stuffing our skylight in our bedroom with a pillow before bedtime to keep it darker a little longer in the morning. A month from now when we're in Fairbanks it will only be dark for an hour or two, so we need to try to adapt to sleeping in the light :-)

We wake up to a gorgeous morning -- blue skies, waterfalls, white-capped mountains.

After packing up (again) we drive north on Hwy 1 through the Fraser Canyon area (beautiful scenery) and stop at Hell's Gate. Hell's Gate is a tourist trap, BUT a tourist trap with great scenery! We take their airtram from Hwy 1, across the Fraser River (165 feet deep and lots of rapids), to the bottom of the canyon. We take lots of pictures, look at their salmon hatchery museum and have lunch overlooking the river. Great time!

We continue on our scenic drive along the Fraser River and then Thompson River. Both sides of the river have very active railroads so we spend time watching trains. One of the highpoints of the drive is when 4 longhorn sheep cross the road in front of us.

One of the lowpoints today is paying $3.95/gallon for diesel!!! This is the first time this trip we've paid over $3/gallon. (As an fyi, regular gas is about $4.75/gallon.) The second lowpoint is constantly hearing the news reports today about the Canadien $ hitting 30 year highs vs the US $. Last year when we travelled to Canada we paid US $.80 for each Canadien $; this year we paid $.92 for each Canadien $.

We decide to drive several extra hours to get to Quesnel BC so that we can leave the 5ver at an RV park tomorrow while we drive to Barkerville (100km east of Quesnel). We plan on staying at a nice RV park beside the lake, but it's a 3-day weekend here (Victoria Day is Monday) and the nice RV park beside the lake is full. So we continue driving and find a park behind a motel. Not picturesque, but at that point we just wanted a place to stay. One good thing is they have free wifi that actually works well :-)

We are filling in the map on the side of our RV:

We drive to the Canadian border at Suma, WA and have no big problems crossing the border. I meant to use up my apples, but forgot so I am forced to throw them out at the border (but the meat and dairy products are fine).

We stop at the Chilliwack Visitors Center and load up with pamphlets and booklets on Canada. Eat some sandwiches in the RV and take off.

Our next stop in Canada is at a bank to convert some U.S. money to Canadian and to get a calling card to make land-line phonecalls. Our cell phones will cost 69-79 cents/minute to use in Canada, so we only intend to use them for emergencies and even then we may not get a signal. Our cell phones will no longer be roaming when we arrive in Alaska, BUT not sure where we’ll get a signal so again we’ll need to use land line phones. We buy a $20 phonecard and learn that there is a 13% sales tax in BC!!! I thought the 8% tax in Washington state was high.

We stop at Hope, BC and set up/unhook the RV, walk around the park, relax awhile outside and then take off for downtown Hope. We walk around the town to look at the wood carvings scattered throughout the town. Hope BC claims to be the wood carving capitol of the world. The carvings were interesting and (more important) they were outside on a beautiful spring day.

Hope’s other ‘claim to fame’ is that it was used in the 80s for the Rambo movie, First Blood. They’re even having a festival later this summer to celebrate the 25th anniversary of making the movie. Apparently one of the scenes take place in a series of old railroad tunnels, so the RV host suggested we go see the tunnels.

There is a short trail that goes back to the tunnels and the walk is very picturesque, following a roaring stream through a canyon. I’m glad we went to see the tunnels even though I don’t think I ever saw the Rambo movie.

It’s our 32nd wedding anniversary today so we go out to dinner at a place recommended by the RV host, Skinny’s Grille. The name seems a little odd and the decorations inside are very eclectic, but the food is wonderful!

So our first day in Canada has gone well….nice scenery…some sun and blue skies….warm temperatures…good food…great walk through the gorge & tunnels. Now to end the day on a great note, I get ready to watch my favorite TV show, Grey’s Anatomy. Unfortunately I find that the cable channel that carries ABC network is complete static!!! So we end up watching a tv show on the educational channel about the first auto trip across the U.S. Interesting show....not better than Grey's Anatomy, but interesting.