Dawson Creek, B.C. ---> Fort Nelson, B.C.

A sunny run north and getting warmer too. We hit 55 degrees this afternoon. Here are a few pictures from the day's drive. The Internet is poor here so this will be short.

Are you wondering about the price of gasoline? $1.209/liter (Canadian dollars)  X 3.79 (convert to US gallons) X .95 (exchange rate today) = $4.36 a gallon. Joyce has volunteered to go back to work!

Lunch stop was at the Old Suicide Hill. "Prepare to meet your maker". Click to enlarge.

Essence of the Alaska Highway - click on the picture for an expanded view.

 I set up the ham radio gear here at the Blue Bell Motel and RV.

Williams Lake, B.C. ---> Dawson Creek, B.C.

A long day of 400 miles, but smooth sailing - this will stand as the longest drive of the whole trip I'm sure. A good road up to Prince George, and then easy, no traffic driving north of there on the Hart Highway. It felt like we finally had hit the north country as we rolled along miles of spruce, fir, and aspen. We saw six black bears, a deer and some elk along the way. Mostly sunny too except for Pine Pass where we had snow squalls and found Azouzetta Lake still ice covered. Throughout the whole day we kept nipping in and out of spring depending on our elevation.

While Joyce made dinner I broke out the ham radio gear and have been bouncing signals off random meteor trails back to Oregon and Washington. Here are a few photos from the day.

Lunch Stop at Bear Lake.

 Compare this picture of Azouzetta Lake to page 112 in the Mile Post. I guess we're early!

 The iconic "Mile Zero" picture for good luck.

Challenges Big and Small

Today was a day for being flexible. We left Summerland, B.C. right at our usual 8:30 AM start time. We were going to take Route 97c around Kelowna, Vernon, and Kamloops, but there was fog, sleet, and ice up on the passes so we stayed on plain old 97 instead which added about 50 miles and gave us a tour of each town's downtown section. Better safe then sorry.

Just past Kamloops Rich blew a trailer tire - yes, another Chinese "May-pop" bit the dust. So we turned his pit stop into a lunch stop. We finally hit Cache Creek on the Cariboo Trail and pointed it north again under clearing skies and an excellent version of Route 97.

All this toil did not go un-rewarded. We decided that our intended stop at Hixon, B.C. was 100 miles too far, so we pulled into the Signal Point Gaming (casino) at Williams Lake. Free overnight parking for our rigs and very, very good food - in fact the restaurant was superb. It was two for one steak and prawns night!

Tomorrow we'll reach for Dawson Creek, B.C. and the actual start of the Alaska Highway. It's 400 miles from here so we'll see what happens.

North! Spokane, WA ---> Summerland, B.C.

Just wind with a small 'w' this morning and some sun. Rich and Lin, and Les and Janet will join us this morning and we'll head north into Canada. Where is that @#$% passport anyhow?

Today's object of interest is taller then the Great Pyramid at Giza, produces prodigious amounts of electricity, and was mentioned in Bob Dylan's song "Idiot Wind".  Give up? Click here.

Roll on Columbia, roll on.

Grand Coulee Dam

Lunch stop

The border crossing was a three minute affair once we established that in fact ALL my weapons were still back in Bozeman. Must be the Montana plates on the truck. We on the shores of Lake Okanagan tonight at a Provincial Park just north of Summerland, B.C. We did about 250 miles today.

Missoula, MT ---> Spokane, WA

 Blustery is the understated word for the day. We heard the high winds forecast last night so we got going early and over Lookout Pass and half way across Idaho before we hit the front. Bar the door Nellie! We had 40 mph gusts for the last hour into Spokane. We just slowed down and took it easy knowing that we could bail out down an exit ramp if it got too 'interesting'. Thankfully it was a quartering headwind and not a cross wind.

We're rockin' and rollin' in the RV parking lot at the Northern Quest Casino out at Airway Heights with gusts to 53 mph now.The tumble weeds are flying by the window.  I think we'll just keep the slides in tonight.

Our Home away from Home

We sat still in Missoula today and organized the trailer a bit more this morning, then spent the afternoon with our good friends John and Helena hiking around Pattee Canyon looking for ticks and bears. None found.

Tomorrow we'll get after it and rendezvous with Rich and Lin, and Les and Janet our Alaska travel companions over in Spokane, WA.

So what kind of RV are we hauling around anyhow? We have a 2007 Arctic Fox 27-5L fifth wheel trailer. Over the past several years we've managed to add a several improvements that greatly enhance boondocking. Did I mention the three months we'll be campground hosting for the State of Alaska at Deep Creek Beach we'll be off-grid? Yap, not the KOA life-style for sure. We have 260 watts of solar panels charging the two house batteries, a Honda 2 kw generator, an Olympus Wave 6 catalytic heater, thermal pane windows, and great tank capacities. Thankfully the dump-it/fill-it station will be just two miles from us, but we can go a good long time between visits.

We just threw away the orginal Chinese tires after blowing one on the way north from Mexico early this spring and having a second start to throw its tread the very next day. I replaced them with some BF Goodrich Commerical T/A light truck tires 235/85/16E. We also replaced the suspension hanger bolts with "wet" ones so we can grease those pins on a regular basis.

We love that the trailer is big enough to live in comfortably, yet small enough to get into the more rustic Forest Service spots.

We pull the trailer with our seven year old, but paid for Chevy 2500HD pick up. We don't have a diesel so we just rev it up and go!

Bozeman, MT ----> Missoula, MT

Today we eased into travel mode with a 200  mile day. We rolled out of Bozeman and made it all of 40 miles to the Wheat Montana Deli in Three Forks for a soup stop. This is a great pit stop, plenty of parking for big rigs, gas and diesel available, great sandwiches made on their own fresh breads and rolls, and located right at the bottom of the MM 274 ramp on I-90.

We must be loaded to the gills, we crested Homestake Pass going 43 mph rev'ing 4700 rpm in first gear. At 6,350 feet above sea level this is easily the highest and steepest pass on the whole trip.

 It was a blustery ride with a strong headwind over to Missoula, but we got all set up at Jim and Mary's RV Park between squalls and went off to visit friends. This a great small RV park tucked into the pines just a mile north of I-90 on Rte. 93.

Time to call it good for the day.

Light the fires, kick the tires.

Enough fondling that copy of "Milepost"! It's time to start across two time zones and 2,900 miles to Ninilchik, Alaska. As you can see our Montana spring has taken a bit of a hit. The forecast for our departure tomorrow is for clear roads and warming temperatures. We're only going 225 miles west over to Missoula to see friends the first day out, but we have the Cardwell Hill and Homestake Pass to cross on I-90.

Speaking of the "Milepost" I found another neat Alaska travel resource - Bell's Travel Guides - they are free, but you have to cough up the postage to get them to your door. Good stuff, kind of like the "Milepost" on a strict diet.

We'll sleep in the trailer tonight and then off we go in the morning.

Getting Geared Up

We're getting ready to roll north to Alaska for the summer. This will be our fourth trip, this year we'll be campground hosting on the Kenai Peninsula. We're to report for duty May 15th, so we'll shove off May 1st and take our time heading up. We'll leave our house in Bozeman, Montana and head over to Spokane, Washington to pick up our travel buddies Rich and Lin and then our merry mini-caravan will trundle north to the tune of 300 miles a day.

We are getting geared up! Our 27 foot Arctic Fox fifth wheel trailer has new shoes, as does the truck, and we bought and installed a catalytic heater. Joyce has been busy packing the larder, by the looks of it you'd guess all we eat is spaghetti!

It's snowing hard  here in Bozeman right now, so we'll see if we can get the rig off the lawn come Saturday morning!