Fort Nelson, British Columbia

We did not make it to the Yukon Territory, as you may notice by the title of this posting. And we may not make it tomorrow. We have about 327 miles yet to go from here to the border. Our drive on the Alaskan Highway was slow today. There were a few high hills to climb and steep grades to go down. There was one patch of road where we had to laugh at all the warnings. At that spot there were signs warning about moose on the road, icy conditions, 8% grade, and, if that was not enough, we were warned that the road was uneven. We soon learned  to take that latter warning seriously. John took the first rough wave of road  a bit too fast and I thought every dish in my cupboards would be broken. Fortunately our motor home stayed in one piece and no dishes got smashed. Most of  what we saw today was lots of rolling hills and forest. The picture below was taken from the top of a hill just before we started descending into a river gorge. Only the tops of trees can be seen.

 The river canyons provided some awesome scenery with their steep rocky bluffs. Below is a picture of Chief Sikanni River. This river flows eventually into the Mackenzie River which empties into the Arctic Ocean.

It amazes me as to how far north we are and what that means for the climate in this area during the winter. According to The Milepost (Alaska's travel planner) Dawson Creek has 100 frost free days. And that certainly accounts for the miles of roadway without any sight of bill boards, homes- any sign of life other than the millions of bugs which cover our windshield and deer by the road!  In a way it is refreshing to only see wilderness surrounding me for miles and miles. Today we saw one large farm complex, and one small town between Dawson Creek and Fort Nelson. It certainly is a different way of life up here. The summer evenings also take a bit of getting use to. I noticed last evening that it was still dusk at 10:30 PM. That makes it hard to figure out when to go to bed. Eventually just feeling very tired makes that decision easy.