Day 10 - Fort Nelson, BC

60's and Sunny!

We pulled out at a leisurely 10:19 a.m. as today's drive isn't as far as some of the other days.  We met the owners of the Willow Grocery Store in Willow, Alaska.  They were spending the night in the same campground as we were.  We shared some of the places we were visiting.  We mentioned visiting some friends in Wasilla.  They asked if we knew what Wasilla meant and we said no, thinking it must be some Alaskan word for some beautiful place.  They said, "ALL I SAW."  Had to think about it, but it is Wasilla spelled backwards!

We knew we had some hills coming up.  Hills?  Well, better than hills.

10% grades in a construction area!  There was even a brake check area!  Also located here was a chain up area.

We've now crossed into British Columbia!

Coming down the hill, we crossed the Peace River where the Memorial Bridge is located.  A number of the engineers building the road lost their lives here in the 1940's.

Coming off the 10% grade we stopped in a rest area.  We were now in British Columbia.  The ladies there were extremely helpful.  Not sure how many people stop there, but one of the ladies was determined to tell us everything we needed to see between this stop and Alaska!  She was very knowledgeable.  We did take in some of the sites she mentioned.  Wish we'd had time to see more of them.

Looking around at the displays outside the visitor's center, we found a gold miner.  Seems a lot of the miners stopped through here on their way to the gold fields.

 We also discovered a GIANT canoe.  It would take a whole army to paddle this one!

 While we were out looking at the other displays, Janice made the acquaintance of another gold miner.  We teased her about taking this one home.  He was a blue ribbon winner!

This location also marked Mile 35 of the old AlCan highway.

 There was an army camp for the engineers located here.  Hard to imagine this place without all the buildings there are now.  It truly was a wilderness.

David said it was time to hit the road again.  So everyone back inside the vehicles on onward we go! MUSH!

The scenery has changed a bit and looks a lot like the Badlands of South Dakota.

We can see the old ALCan highway alongside the "new" road.  I can understand why people told us to take extra tires.  The old road did need to be replaced.

The scenery also fooled Sir Garmin.  He is what he showed us for most of the day.

 Beautiful scenery, but nothing as far as the GPS was concerned.

I found a fellow NASCAR fan here.  They painted Greg Biffle's number over the road!  Not a Biffle fan, but glad to see one here!

 We wanted to see a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).  This one was riding 400 horses.

We decided to stop in St. John for fuel.  Quick stop and then back on the road.

They certainly like big statues here.  We saw this lumberjack peeking out of the woods.

For the better part of the trip, this had been the most bear we've seen until...

We spotted this black bear on the side of the road!  It was eating dandelions.  We were told that the bears eat the dandelions and they get drunk off them.  Crazy.

A quick stop for lunch.  Because we have so little room in our RV, we usually eat in Janice's motorhome.  Today we had sandwiches.  Some of us had salami.  Some of us didn't get salami because Pumpkin sneaked off with what was left in a package and proceeded to have salami for lunch, too!

Before coming to Alaska, we'd read books and watched videos.  One thing a lot of them had in common was eating pie along this stretch of the road.  I'm not a big pie eater, but David is, so we stopped at a small place.  Outside was SASQUATCH!

He has a fascination for Sasquatch, so he asked if he could have his picture made with him and he agreed.

Janice and Kay decided to have their picture made, too, and he agreed again.

Inside we go and David tries the pie.  He asked the waitress if the pie was home made.  She told him it was freshly baked that day.  BIG DIFFERENCE!

Not sure it was what he wanted!

Back to the road after a short stop.  We saw two more bears but didn't get their pictures as the camera wasn't ready.

8% grade on the next hill and it's marked as a slide area.  The road leads down to another river and we noticed kids in bathing suits playing in the river.  I guess it was summer for them.  The water had a swift current.  Can't imagine what the temperature was in the river.

We reached our destination of Ft. Nelson!   Dinner and then off to bed.

Mileage:  3,378

TTFN!

Jenny :)