Alaska Canada Trip Log, Milepost One

June 9, 2008 Monday Day 7

Up early this morning at 0600 and after a frantic morning . . . ready to leave at 0650 hours . . . waiting for our Alabama friends. They had made an early morning run to Wal-Mart so we agreed that since we needed fuel, we’d head out and meet them at the fuel station. The timing was perfect and we rolled from Dawson Creek at 0710 hours.

Our trip was long today. We finally settled on a place near Summit Hill at roughly 1715 hours . . . a wayside because our scheduled stop was being rebuilt. Along the way we had a wonderful day of wildlife viewing with 3 different bear sightings. We saw a beautiful velvet black bear, though small, in the morning. A Mom and her new cub . . . she was showing it off we felt since she played along the road and was seemingly oblivious to the cars/trucks/RV’s that careened off the road to view her and her cub. The last bear we saw was a massive male in the high country whose girth was so large that we often felt as though we were viewing two bears.

The route today took us through several historic towns or whistle stops. We were amazed to see Energetic City which was named for the discovery of the natural gas fields discovered in the 1950’s. Fort Nelson was our stop for refueling, propane and a lovely lunch at Don’s Sports Bar and Pub. LOVE the French fries in this country! The exchange rate is about even so that makes it nice when we use our greenbacks and are able to receive back Canadian without being penalized either way.

Other wildlife seen along the way this day were several deer, some elk, a couple of moose (one was a cow with her new calf) and another (sigh) road kill moose. The country is big here. Like western Montana but bigger. We saw many snow capped mountain tops in the distance ... vistas of what is yet to come.

The pups loved our destination as we went for a long walk after dinner (we supped with the Zortman crew bringing appetizers and dessert) along the

Testa river and the road. Both were well behaved and Ruger was especially obedient – coming when called and being rewarded with being off leash when no vehicles were in the area. After coffee and final conversation we headed to our respective abodes – pups are whipped and so are we. Lights out around tenish. Temperatures today were in the low 60’s, some wind, mostly sunny with occasional showers.

Distance traveled was just short of 400 miles.