Getting Closer To The Border

Good Nite!!!!

After we passed the little town we decided to stop at a pull out and call it a night. It was Clinton, Canada.

Then we head on to Lake Williams.

These were people at the lake trying to cool off. It was pretty warm when we stopped there for a minute.

This was McLeese Lake in the Caribou District, close to Williams Lake.

This is just an old building sitting on the side of the road.

This was a restaurant that was closed so we stopped to fix something to eat and Tommy got out and cleaned the windshield. After he came in and ate, we rested a little and I got ready to drive. When we got to our next location Tommy was asking me where the bucket and the brush were. I went and looked where I always put them and they weren't there. Guess what!! I guess Tommy didn't finish his job and didn't put things up so I guess we left them at this place.

Just outside of Prince George was quite a bit of construction.

This is going through Prince George.

I tried to take a picture of this RV Park but things just come around too fast, before you know it, you've pasted it and didn't get it. It was a park where we stayed on our way to Alaska. This is where we rerouted because of the fires at Fort John.

More construction. This was construction before we got to Prince George.

A beautiful lake.

Some more of the many streams and lakes running along the highway.

After we went past Chetwynd we noticed that a lot of the trees in the mountains were brown. We thought maybe they were just burned but it didn't look like they were burned because there were some green trees in the middle of the brown ones. We figured that it might be pine beetles killing the trees.

Through Dawson Creek and to Chetwynd

This is Chetwynd from the top of a hill.

Chetwynd has recently earned the title, "Chain Saw Sculpture Capital of the World" for the collection of chain saw sculptures.

The next little town from Dawson Creek is Chetwynd.

I don't know what this is. It might be a llama. I wish it was turned my way.

Another bridge along the way.

And away we go again. We were going to stay at Dawson Creek for the night but we were trying to get out of Canada as quick as we could so we went on.

And here we are, finally in front of the World Famous Alaskan Highway. We couldn't leave without taking a picture there. This is one of the main pictures of the Alaskan trip.

We got this Canadian to take our picture in front of the Mile Marker just before we left Dawson Creek. Boy did he talk. He talked a lot of history and about our presidents.

This is a statue that is located at a roundabout across from the Alaskan Highway mile marker and the grain elevator.

This is another of the Mile Markers which is down the road across from the Visitor's Center. It also tells you how many miles to different towns.

This is the Visitor's Center at Dawson Creek and is next door to the Grain Elevator building.

This is the last of Dawson Creek's heritage elevators which now houses an art gallery. It is a wooden grain elevator and was bought and moved to its present location through the efforts of community organizations and has been refurbished.

Another marker letting us know that this is Mile 0 of the Alaskan Highway.

Well, here we are entering into Mile 0 of the Alaskan Highway. We didn't start at Mile 0 of the Alaskan highway because when we were at Prince George, we heard that there were some fires at Fort St. John and were afraid that we would get stranded there and wouldn't know for how long so we decided to reroute.

We're finally coming into Dawson Creek. We had a little rain as we were coming in.

And then there were some green fields also.

There were several fields of yellow. I read somewhere that these fields are planted with canola, a hybrid of rapeseed that was developed as a low cholesterol oil seed. Raw seed is processed in Alberta and Japan.

Fort St. John from top of a hill.

Coming into Fort St. John.

Just a scenery shot while on our way to Dawson Creek.

Wonderful Surprise at Fort Nelson

Here are the couples from our FMCA Chapter that are on their way to Alaska, Randle was a little tired. Hey guys, I'm glad its you and not us. You'll really enjoy it though, especially down the road where we just came from, where we saw bunches of animals. Adios for now.

Here I am in front of the Visitor's Center with our coach across the road.This is where we stayed for the night.

The Canadian government began construction of an airport in 1941 in Fort Nelson as part of the Northwest Air Staging Route, and this was followed by perhaps the biggest boom to Fort Nelson--the construction of the Alaska Highway in 1942. About 2,000 soldiers were bivouacked in Fort Nelson, which they referred to as Zero, as it was the beginning of a road to Whitehorse and another road to Fort Simpson. Later Dawson Creek became Mile 0 and Fort Nelson Mile 300.

The "Big Splash" was one of the special events surrounding Fort Nelson's 200th aniversary in 2005.

This is the Visitor's Center which was just across from where we parked for the night. at Fort Nelson. Fort Nelson was an unorganized territory until 1957 when it declared an Improvement District. It took on villiage status in 1971 and town status in 1987. Fort Nelson took on a new status in 2005 when it set the Guinness World Record for the largest water balloon fight. The record 2,269 participants, ranging in age from 6 to 93, turned out on June 18 for the "Big Splash." The event closed the Alaska Highway for 2 hours.

We finally made it to Fort Nelson, British Columbia. As we came into the little town, at the right was an RV park. I was still keeping an eye out for our friends and sure enough we saw our friend's coach right in the front row. We went on a couple of blocks into the town and parked in front of a hotel that had wifi, so we turned our computers on to see if we could get wifi there and we could. We unhooked our car and went to see if Connie was there cuz we hadn't seen their car. When we got there we knocked on the door and Connie was as surprised as we were that we had actually met up all the way in Canada. Not only that but she said that the other couple in our chapter traveling to Alaska had just got into that park too. WOW, we had an absolutely, positively good day today. We not only saw a lot of animals but we also saw the humans that we were hoping to see. What a day.

We are getting closer to civilization.

Another bridge being replaced.

Come along sweetie, don't stare at them people.

I guess the ones with the straighter horns are the mamas cuz this one has a baby and daddy's don't take care of babies.

He's posing for me.

I don't know the difference in the horns but this one must be a male.

More mountain goats. These look a little different than the ones we saw earlier. I don't know what it is, maybe the others were a little younger and didn't have quite as big horns. They just seemed smaller also.

Again, they don't want us to go over the hill and take a dive into the lake.

We stopped and changed drivers. It seems like we're going to get into more construction and Tommy doesn't like me driving on construction cuz he thinks I drive too fast and he doesn't like it.

And a little more rain. Maybe that's what brought the wildlife out into the open.

Along the way we saw these caribou crossing the road.

We were getting a little rain again.

We still enjoy our trip and the scenery.

And we're over here waiting on this end for quite a while also.

They probably waited a long time for the pilot truck.

There was a few miles of this.

Gravel road that they are working on.

That's enough. I'll just go back home and take a nap.

I guess they are trained to pose, sometimes they just don't want to do it.

A moose, a moose. These wildlife just sneak up on us. We're always looking though. That is the name of the game. We look as much in the woods as we do at the road.

More mirrors and wipers, you just have to see beyond that.

These pictures are nothing compared to what we're actually seeing.

More scenery.

Here comes a carravan. Boy, they've got a long way ahead of them. I'm glad its them and not us. We keep looking at these carravans because we've got two couples from our FMCA chapter that are on carravans. They are both on different carravans and they both started at different times and different locations. One of the couples I know were at Dawson Creek 3 or 4 days ago and since we're in Canada and don't have telephone or internet service we can't get in touch with them. We keep looking for them and maybe we'll meet somewhere down the road.

I guess I am a fool. I posted the last picture out of order. Who cares, I just got excited cuz we've been seeing lots of wildlife.

Okay mama, we made it and they are still there not moving. They must be taking our picture. Let me pose for them fools.

Watch out for us cuz we're not going to watch out for you and we're going to take our sweet time going across.

Oh my, what do we have here. A mama and her baby just going for a walk along the highway. I hope they are not trying to hitch a ride. We don't have room for them.

More of these funny looking pictures with shades and windshield wipers on them, but the road way looks good.

Okay, we'll let them people through. They probably took plenty of pictures and we're tired of posing anyway. I guess those arrows means that we should stay out of the lake.

Alright we'll wait till you feel like getting off the road, mean while we'll just snap a few pictures.

We don't have to watch out for traffic, we have the right of way and we know it. We went around many mountains that the road just goes beside them.

Okay, I'm coming over there. There's nothing over here anyway.

But I don't want to climb up, I just want to stay right here.

Wow, this gravel on the road tastes pretty good. Who cares if there's cars coming, we're hungry.

What do you see over there?

And looky here what we found. There were a bunch of goats up on the side of this mountain. They all looked like they were eating a lot of food but all I saw was gravel and rocks. They were finger licking good, I guess.

On the road again.