June 11th

THE DETAILS:

WEATHER: Gorgeous. When we pulled out of Valley View it was 63 degrees and clear skies. The high today was 83 and other than a few rain showers (that we could see from miles away) we drove in dry clear weather.

DISTANCE: We left Valley View Alberta at 10:00 today and arrived at Pink Mountain, British Columbia at 6 pm. We drove 290 miles in 8 hours.


So it’s interesting to watch the campgrounds fill up with people all heading in the same direction. It’s like a huge funnel. People from Canada and the States all converging on one road…. The Alaska Highway. We will begin our journey on the legendary road today. It begins in Dawson Creek, British Columbia. We have a magazine called, “The Milepost”. It is supposedly the “bible” for Alaskan travel. I spent hours last night studying the guide to figure out how to use it. Gary, on the other hand, poured over his Alaskan fishing books getting ready for the BIG CATCH!

60 miles south of Dawson Creek we caught our first glimpse of the Rockies to our west. Awesome! I have a feeling I’m going to be saying that a lot from this point on. The Rockies tower over the prairie that we are now traveling on and though the mountains are many miles away (about 170) you can see the snow covered peaks.

Well, we did it! We are now on the Alaskan Highway making our way towards Alaska. We are seeing more and more US license plates now that we’re on this road also. It was an interesting drive…. Beautiful scenery, miles upon miles of forest, and bridges that span large rivers. The road is great to travel on (so far). They cut a large birth of trees back away from the road so you can see about 30 yards on both sides of the road. It gives you time to see and then brake for animals you might see…. Like the moose with her calf that almost ran out in front of us. There was a couple from Virginia that were following us in their RV who then pulled into the same campground that we are in and they were amazed at the sight! They were disappointed that they weren’t able to get any pictures. We also saw a very healthy, large red fox and a couple of deer. It’s interesting that the color of the deer and moose are greyer than at home. The moose at home are blacker and the deer are more brown.

We would have crossed another time zone today b/c it runs along the BC & AB provincial line, except for the towns of Dawson Creek, Charlie Lake, Taylor and Fort St. John, which are on Mountain time and do not observe daylight savings time. They are definitely nonconformists up here… and they can get away with it!