I finally have decent cell service so I can post. It has been quite a while. I finished the last post with us in Dawson Creek at the Northern Lights RV Park. One thing I didn’t do was post the mandatory photo of us at the Mile 0 sign. This isn’t the tourist version which is much more grand and located a few feet away. The folks who took our picture thereput it on a photo sharing site and I haven’t had enough service to download it! This will have to do.
After we left Dawson Creek, our wagon master started warning us of seriously deteriorating road conditions. Let’s just say that he has a much different view of bad roads than we do! A few frost heaves, some pot holes, but I have been on much worse roads. We ended up in Ft. Nelson at the Triple G Hideaway. We just spent the night there after a fairly long trip, and it was nicely unremarkable. The road to Ft. Nelson was the most productive for animals of our trip so far though!
We found two small nursery herds of woods bison. It is a subspecies of American bison – larger and native to the high forests instead of the plains.
One of the not so pretty parts of the drive was the man camps we still came to. These were used for the petroleum and mining industries. Interesting.
The next morning we headed to Liard River and the hot spring there. The scenery was the most spectacular we had seen, full of rocky crags and big rivers.
We went through the Stone Mountain area, hoping to see some Stone sheep, a subspecies of dall sheep, but we didn’t see any. We did see even more gorgeous scenery though.
I saw the most spectacular debris field of stones too, either an avalanche path or an alluvial fan.
Liard Hot Springs was sadly a wash out. The mosquitos were thick enough to carry off small children, and we stayed happily back in the motorhome, looking at the hundreds of mosquitos trying to get in. They drove the cats crazy trying to chase them. The campground was a private one right across the road from the hot springs, and they had a boil order for their water! Glad we always keep at least a 1/2 tank, just in case.
After Liard we headed to Watson Lake and the Northern Lake RV Park. It was right across the road from the famous signpost forest. There are thousands and thousands of signs.
We also attended a decent planetarium like show at the Northern Lights Center. There was an old film (2020) about how the Big Bang created the universe plus descriptions of various components of the universe. Dated, but decent. Then there was a much better show about the Northern Lights. I have seen the northern lights as both general green color in the sky (in Iowa, far south of most of the shows) and as green moving blobs outside Ely in northern Minnesota. I hope to see the ribbon style before we head home, but between my early to bed style and the daylight that lasts forever, it isn’t a sure thing at all.
Today we drove to Whitehorse, YT. The roads are gradually getting slightly worse, but still not too bad. I generally drove about 80-90 mph, or 50-55 mph (the speed limit was 100 mph or 62 mph). It was slow enough I could react to the occasional bad spot in the road and do sightseeing without spending forever. I admit, I do have a bit of a lead foot! We saw some lovely places.
We just relaxed when we got to Pioneer RV Park. Very crowded sites and poor electrical infrastructure. We can’t open one of our four slides due to a small tree, and the power fluctuates enough to make operating AC and any other power hungry appliance problematic. Luckily we are quite capable of dry camping without much trouble. The people with the big all-electric coaches can’t even operate their stove without electricity. Thank goodness for propane!
I thought I would post a picture of how Minnie travels, just for grins. Luna generally sleeps on Kevin’s lap.
We had dinner at Klondike Ribs and Salmon. Fabulous! I had salmon, and Kevin had the ribs. I will post what we do during our stay here later.
