May 2007

We pack up (again) and leave the campsite, our latest start in weeks: 11am. We are enjoying the incredible view from our table window, so we aren’t moving very fast. The blue-green water here is very pretty this morning.

We drive a few miles down the road and pull over to look at more Stone sheep. They are licking the salt from the side of the road.

We also stop for a short hike to a scenic overlook. There is often wildlife seen there, but not today – today’s only wildlife is the huge BC mosquitoes! They're at least twice the size of the ones back home in PA.

Our stop today is at Laird River Hotsprings Provincial park. They have room in their campground so we spend our 3rd night in a row dry camping, but the scenery for these parks is wonderful – so much nicer than the many “parking lot” RV parks we’ve stayed at.

We weren’t sure if the springs would be open since we had seen in someone’s blog (who are also traveling to Alaska, but are a few days ahead of us) that the springs were closed the afternoon that they stopped due a bear that had bathers trapped in the spring. The rangers had chased the bear away so the bathers could get out, but they had the springs closed while the rangers tried to locate the bear and prevent it from returning.

No bears at the springs today, so we have lunch and head up to the springs. We walk to the furthest spring first and I am not impressed – murky blue-green water. No way I’m getting in that stuff, but Jere swims around in it and enjoys the hot water. Jere wants to swim in a place where he can see snow on the mountains :-)

After about ten minutes we return to the first spring (where it’s clear and I can see the many pebbles on the bottom) and have a great time. We stay in the far end of the spring where it’s not as hot – not sure how long we were in, but it must have been at least an hour. Joe found a large log and was floating around on that for awhile.

We walk back, have dinner and start a campfire. Jere and I go for a walk while Joe enjoys his campfire. The campground is full – it’s a weekend and it’s a very nice park. We walk out to the road and see a buffalo. I’m hesitant to get too close for pictures, so we decide to go back to the campsite and drive the truck back for pictures. The buffalo must only be about 100 yards from our campsite (our campsite is in the woods on the right of the picture below). There’s also another group of buffalo up the road so we take a look at them also.

Then we return to the campsite to sit by the fire and tell Joe that what we thought was a deer path beside our campsite is actually a buffalo path :-)

Then for our third evening in a row, we end the day by making s’mores by the campfire :-) Another great day in British Columbia.

We leave our wonderful campsite overlooking the Summit Lake at Stone Mtn Provincial Park.

On the drive out of the park we see a Stone Sheep.

The drive today is short, about 50 miles. Our first stop today is at the Toad River Lodge to gas up and check out their collection of hats. Their ceiling is lined with thousands of baseball type hats. Very odd. But unfortunately the thing that is most memorable to us is that we pay $1.28 for a liter of diesel—that’s $4.86/gallon! Almost hitting the $5/gallon mark :-(

We see some incredible scenery as we traverse the northern part of the Rocky Mountains.

We stop at another beautiful lakeside campsite today: the shoreline of Muncho Lake BC Provincial Park (Strawberry Flats Campground). We’re the first ‘campers’ here so we get our pick of sites and select one with a beautiful view of the lake. We thought yesterday’s campsite had incredible scenery, but this site might be even more scenic.

We have another incredibly gorgeous view from our table window:

We spend the rest of the day relaxing by the lake….

And end the day with a campfire and s’mores. I try making a banana boat over the campfire for Jere and Joe (slice a long opening in an unpeeled banana and stuff it with chocolate chips and mini-marshmallows; wrap it with foil and roast), but I think we’re going to stick with s’mores for the rest of the trip :-) The roasted banana is NOT very yummy looking.

I’m sitting at the table watching a very large beaver swim around in the lake beside our trailer. Most of the lake is still frozen. The exception is the end of the lake beside our trailer. He’s been swimming there for the last 30 minutes or so.

Anyway, we’re parked on the shore of Summit Lake in the northern Rockie Mts at Stone Mtn. BC provincial park. It’s the highest point on the Alaska Highway, around 4200 ft. It’s a little chilly here, but Jere really liked the scenery and for most of the day we’ve had the campground to ourselves.

We drove 90 miles today. We saw a herd of bison (it was a bison ranch), several black bears, some elk and some moose. We were looking for caribou, but didn’t see any today. Hopefully tomorrow.

Our only stop today was at the Tsetse River Lodge for their “Best in the Galactic” cinnamon rolls. They were delicious and we enjoyed looking at all of the paraphernalia hanging on the walls while we ate.

We spent the rest of the afternoon by the lakeside here with a fire going and enjoying the scenery. We started to go on a trail beside the lake earlier today but there was just too much snow and there was a moose on the hillside above us so we weren’t sure if he would share the trail with us :-)

The view from our window is incredibly wonderful:

A view of the frozen lake the next morning:

We start our drive up the Alaska Highway today, leaving Dawson Creek and ending up at Fort Nelson. This section of the drive has been written up to be the least scenic part of the drive, but we find many things to keep it interesting. The best sight is a mama black bear and her two cubs that we see along the highway. The two cubs scamper up a tree when we slow down to try to take a picture and they look really cute!!! I do not get very good pictures since we are in a slow moving car, but I do get a picture of the mama black bear and one of the cubs climbing the tree. The cub is hugging the pine tree trunk on the rightside of the picture.

The most unusual thing we see today is a heard of bison on the side of the road, trying to cross. We’re not sure where they came from.

We arrive at the RV park in Fort Nelson, set up and visit the historical Fort Nelson museum beside the park. It’s actually a very interesting little museum.

I make sure to pick out an RV park with cable TV tongiht and we spend the night watching TV: season finale of Lost and American Idol. The Canadian TV channel, CTV, has them both on, so TV watching from 7pm til 11pm :-) That may be the last of TV watching for awhile, or at least til a rainy day in a town. The next stretch of road is supposed to be extremely scenic and the sun is supposed to shine the next few days. Yea!!!

The sun is shining at 5am this morning, but a few hours later it is cloudy, windy and snowing! We must have a windchill in the teens!

We spend the day running errands, cleaning, doing chores and planning the next few weeks of the trip. We drive into Dawson Creek to have lunch at the Dawson Creek Cafe. A pamphlet we picked up at the visitors center said the cafe is furnished with antiques and old Alaska Highway info, but when we get there it says "Closed til Further Notice". We're finding the the info given out at Visitors Centers is not always current or accurate :-(

So we end up at A&W for burgers and fries. We watch a snow squall go through -- even the workers are looking at the snow in disbelief.

Anyway, we spend most of the day at the RV park, doing laundry, cleaning, planning, etc. We still all agree that this is hands down the worst RV park we've stayed at so far on this trip. We're looking forward to starting up the Alaska Highway tomorrow.