May 27, 2006

5-25-06Left Dawson Creek at 7:45 am in the rain after having Tim Horton donuts for breakfast.. Through more cattle country. Could look across the hills and see our highway ahead. Had rain and sun all day. More places of the road are patched with dirt and gravel. Our rig is filthy, but no need to clean it now! Arrived at Fort Nelson at 2:30 and stayed at Blue Bell Inn. Pretty much a bare lot wit hookups in back of motel. Gas is up to $1.249. We paid $1.349 just south of Fort Nelson so only got $30 worth. At 1 pm a sign said "Welcome to Northern Rockies." Not as impressive as the Rockies in the states. Many natural gas wells around. Although we cannot see them, we see the swaths cut through the trees where they bring the gas lines to the main lines along the highway. Have seen two black bears and four deer total but none close enough to take a picture.

5-26-06Finally a day like we have been expecting - left Fort Nelson at 8 am and about 10 minutes down the road saw three cariboo. No place to stop and on Harold's side so no pictures. Then came a herd of bison that are being raised for food. There was a great gray owl sitting on a stump on the far side of the road and a chipmunk went running across safely.We were in the mountains most of the day. Views of snow covered mountains, green valleys with trees of all different colors of green. The white spruce were brown on about the top foot of the tree. I thought they were dying until I saw new growth above the brown. Finally at a stop I was able to walk up to a tree and discovered the top foot is covered with small cones about 1 inch long and very soft. Summit Lake was still frozen over. Lake Muncho (7 miles long & 430 ft. deep) was still partly frozen and the lake is green. So the ice is green also! A lot of the road has been reworked and is very wide with nice shoulders. There are lots of pull outs and most of them have litter cans (bear proof, of course). When the summer rains come, there is so much water that it washes down the gravel from the mountain. This is deposited at the river spread out like a fan about 100 ft. wide and 50 feet deep. You can see this gravel on both sides of the road as it has been washing down for many years.Today we started seeing the wildlife. After the cariboo there were two groups of four of Stone Sheep, a grizzly down by the river, another stone sheep, several deer with a large white area on their rear and the tail is totally white except for the black hairs on the very tip. Carol saw a moose, but it took off as soon as he saw us so we were not able to stop for pictures. We camped at Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park. There are two large ponds about a ten minute walk from the parking lot. We soaked about 20 minutes then got caught in the rain on the way back. Put our towels over our heads and acted like northwesterners!! Came back and played some gin then slept for a couple of hours. Today we traveled only 192 miles in 5 hours and 10 minutes, but we saw a lot of beautiful scenery and God's creatures out in the wild.

5-27-06
We saw black momma and baby bears and a beautiful fox today. More pictures later when I find another hookup. We are in Watson Lake tonight.