Jun 22, 2008 - Day's One and Two on the Alcan Hwy.

North to Alaska, we’re going north the Rush is on. That’s the first line in the 1960 Johnny Horton song of the movie starring John Wayne, only we aren’t in any rush. Day one of the Alcan Run, we only did about a hundred and sixty miles and stopped at the Sikanni River campground and we had a nice site on the Sikanni River with 20 amp electric. We are taking our time to reach Alaska mostly because of the mount of Caravans that are heading up the highway along with all the individuals and the truck traffic it’s nut’s. I was sure I saw a guy...

Jun 21, 2008 - Alaskan Highway

The rally has definitely entered a new phase in he last couple of days. The weaher has turned much colder and the daily mileages are long. The Alaskan highway is a beautiful road but goes on literally for 1500 miles and becomes a little tedious after a few hours. Having said that there are numerous interludes which are fascinating. For xample, the wildlife round here is quite amazing. If only this computer could upload photos I could show pictures of bears, bison, long horned sheep that we passed at various intervals at the roadside. we...

Jun 20, 2008 - Grande Prairie to Fort Nelson

We left Grande Prairie to head for the Alaska Highway. For perhaps the first time we felt that we had not seen anything of the town. We had spent a lot of time stopping on the route yesterday and, when we got in, I found that the internet connection was good and was able to catch up both with this journal (except photographs) and the main rally one of which I am editor. Anyway, we gathered that we weren’t missing much and our hotel was in the middle of an industrial estate. These places aren’t always exciting. Some miles out of Grande...

Jun 18, 2008 - Ft Nelson, BC

Only planned to drive about 180 miles today. The day was nice with no rain. Only had a couple of steep grades at the river locations. After about a ½ hour on the road, came upon two brown (Grizzly) bears about 20 feet from the road. Going to fast to stop and take pictures. A few miles down the road, saw 4 black bears the same distance from the road. Then saw some open range horses on the roadside. The Stover’s saw a couple of moose also. Made it to Ft. Nelson, unhook to fuel up. Diesel was $1.55/litre. Jenny and I went to the Ft Nelson...

Jun 16, 2008 - Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson

Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson, mileage at beginning of day 64,315 Gas outside of Ft. Nelson, $5.94 pg, 9.8 mpg $336.50 My birthday! Woke up to blue sky and no clouds, but unfortunately it didn't last. I can see blue sky through the window now (a little) but it's been raining on us a good part of the day. We are now in the Northern Rockies, and we can occasionally see snow covered peaks off to the west, but most of the day has been spent in tree covered hills. Even the critters stayed hidden today, we racked up 4 deer and a ground squirrel and...

Jun 13, 2008 - Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson

We had our longest driving day so far at just under 300 miles. The sun was shining when we left Dawson Creek and I thought it would be a nice day. But that was short lived as it started raining not long after we got on the road. And it rained almost all day, except for when it was snowing. Yes, I said SNOWING. Eek! The only thing worse than driving while towing the rig in the rain is driving while towing the rig in the snow. Fortunately it didn’t really stick to the road, and it was kind of pretty as it laid on the trees. I took a lot of...

Jun 10, 2008 - Fort Nelson, B.C.

We have not had the best computer access over the past couple of days so keeping my journal current has been a challenge. We left Dawson Creek on Monday morning. We spent Sunday doing our weekly chores and hanging around camp. There were several RVs there who were part of a caravan which will be leaving this coming Thursday. They had their meeting and distributed matching jackets to all of the participants. Manuel has started calling John our wagonmaster. He wanted to know where his jacket was. We continued north on Highway 97 under a...

Jun 10, 2008 - Fort Nelson, BC

We had a very exciting drive today from Pink Mountain to Fort Nelson. We saw two huge black bears, one on the side of the road and the other a bit off the road at a stream. We also saw a huge deer. The roads today were quite interesting. We had a mix of 10% grades down to 6%. Some of the roads were very bumpy and dirty. I think they just filled a lot of spots with gravel and they even had signs telling you to prepare for loose gravel and dust. There were clouds of dust at times and the rest of the time the roads were great. We stopped for...

Jun 7, 2008 - Fort Nelson, BC

OK we are on the Alaska Highway, but still a long ways to go to Alaska. Just a short distance out of Dawson Creek we took a scenic loop of the highway to see the Kiskatinaw River Bridge. It is the only remaining original timber bridge on the Alaska Highway. Once again there were winding roads around rivers and lakes and some mountain passes. We drove about 280 miles to Fort Nelson, British Columbia. We didn’t see any animals, just great scenery through the Rocky Mountains.

Jun 5, 2008 - Overcoming fears

Today was a day of overcoming fears. I awoke at 5:00 and was kept awake by a mosquito until 6:20 when I got up. I awoke with a migraine and discovered that I left my Imitrex at home. I was really worried about driving over the mountains. Well, I had come this far and I couldn't let my fears stop me so I started getting the rv ready to roll. We were on the road by 8:30. We had good roads all day that was what saved the day. I bought $50.00 of gas in Grande Prairie at $1.309 liter. We crossed over into British Columbia and Dawson Creek the...

Jun 5, 2008 - Headed toward "The Land of The Midnight Sun"

June 3rd We got the windshield fixed pretty quickly, hitched up the Big Horn and went to check out the Chainsaw Carvings. They are placed all around the downtown area and are pretty amazing. A lot of detail, especially using a chainsaw! Chainsaw artists come from all over for the competition. Some from BC but lots from the lower 48 and we saw an amazing one of eagles done by a Japanese artist. I will try to include a few pictures if they turn out ok. The sun always seemed to be in the wrong direction. We strolled around town looking at the...

Jun 4, 2008 - To Ft. Nelson BC

This was another day of racking up the miles. We left the RV park in Manning quite early, and headed south toward Grimshaw AB, then west toward Fort St. John BC, where we had lunch and then joined the Alaska Highway (about 50 miles up the road from its official start in Dawson Creek BC, but about 250 miles short of where we had planned to join it, at the end of the Liard Trail). We continued on to Fort Nelson BC, where we spent the night in an RV park behind a truck stop (great washrooms, though, which was all we needed). The town has a...