August 17th continued

THE WEATHER: Cooler and dryer today, temps in the 70’s, but the air quality continued to diminish due to smoke

THE DISTANCE: 330 Miles from Vanderhoof to Cache Creek. We are staying at the Brookside RV Park in British Columbia.


So today I officially retired the Milepost magazine. If you ever plan to drive to Alaska, that should be your first purchase. What an incredible tool to navigate your trip through some very remote territory. I actually missed not having the magazine laying across my lap today. We are now into pavement everywhere, lots of stores (to chose from when we enter a town), traffic, and lots of road construction stops. I miss Alaska.

The smoke from the fires was incredibly thick. Visibility went from 11/2 miles down to ½ mile for most of the 330 miles. In talking to a few locals as we got gas, etc., they said this was very unusual. The radio used the term “aggressive” wild fires. If it looks this bad this far away from the active burning, I can’t imagine what those firefighters are having to deal with on the fire line. Gary got a headache from it and my eyes and throat are burning due to dryness. We turned on the a/c and it helped us but not the gas mileage. When we crossed into the Marble mountain range, it was like everything vanished. Visibility increased, we could open the windows and breathe clean air. Well, I wish there was something wonderful to write about but we literally could not see more than a mile in front of us so there you have it. Tomorrow we look forward to driving across the US border and into rain forests! Yippee!