British Columbia – Page 2 – On the road with Jim

Fort Nelson – British Columbia

Summer Solstice; the longest day of the year and we celebrated it here in Fort Nelson, or mile 300 on the Alaskan/Canadian highway. At 58.81 degrees north, we’re only five degrees south of the Arctic Circle and night is a constantly dusk. It’s not getting dark and the queen’s eye masks aren’t enough to let her sleep comfortably. She had to make a set of dark curtains to make it through the ~~night~~ lack of night.

The road yesterday turned westerly again towards the Canadian Rockies. We haven’t gotten to the big craggy mountains yet. The geography is more like the Appalachians, low-lying mountains with an occasional cliff and river canyon. The oil industry is very much present in this area of British Columbia and most of the trades support either that or tourists like us.

Fort Nelson is a smaller community than Dawson Creek. Our official and highly accurate census is taken from whether there’s a Wall-Mart, Safeway or Costco. None of them are here. There are several liquor stores here however, for which we’re grateful.

Since there is so much daylight, I got up early to explore the town and try to find something interesting to shoot. After an hour and a half I gave up and came back to the trailer and crawled back in bed. Most of the architecture is metal buildings that are so practical for a place like this, but so boring when they’re all you can find.

Main Street Fort Nelson from a back street. — Except for a new Ramada Hotel, most of the commercial buildings are prefabricated.

Later in the morning Fred and I went out to a local fishing store that I found, to see about a set of waders for me (No, I am not going to walk the catwalk like Fred did. How could I possibly top that act?). But we also had to pick up a battery for my car remote, a swivel for his trailer sink and a new jar of trailer hitch grease (and while we were at it, we hit one of the liquor stores). The women, wanted to visit a quilt shop at the edge of town but it’s closed on Monday’s.

Fred and I ran into them at the Ft. Nelson Museum, one of the recommendations in the guide books. That changed my view of the town. That’s because, this isn’t the first Ft. Nelson site. I don’t know if fires, floods or some other disaster was the reason to move the town, but all of that interesting stuff is in this museum; even some of the original buildings.

Original Ft. Nelson Post Office — The post office from the original site of Ft. Nelson is located in the Historical Ft. Nelson Museum.

We met the owner/curator, a wonderful codger named Marl Brown in the auto building. At 87 years, he loves to show off his toy’s if you ask the right questions. He keeps about a dozen automobiles of different vintages in the building and none of them were restored, but they all run! One of them is a century old Buick that Marl told us that he drove round trip to Watson Lake and back on its birthday. That is just over 600 miles. He parades them on Canada’s National Day. They’re not mint, but he keeps them running.

Marl in front of truck. — Curator, Marl Brown, in front of a running Federal truck.

I have a friend, Paul Speer, that collects ‘Hit and Miss’ engines (a motor with a flywheel used to pump irrigation water), so I asked Marl if he had one. Yes he did and proceeded to put a thimble of gasoline in it, then started it for us. Marl jury-rigged a Coke and Pepsi can on the exhaust ports and they randomly popped up when the alternating cylinders fired.

Marl starts antique car. — As a visitor watches, Marl Brown prepares to start one of his antique cars; an open one cylinder roadster that I’ve never heard of before.

We spent a bit of time perusing the treasures that were in Marl’s collection. Surveying equipment, bulldozers used in for building the road, assay scales, rotary airplane motors (and an Alison engine from a Spitfire), and daily stuff that people used during the road construction.

There was even something that was close to home for Fred and I. In the early years of the town, electricity was provided by five generators driven by large diesel engines. They’ve been replaced by gas-powered turbines. The diesel engines are the same that we had at the power plant that we worked at. Marl had one of these two-story monsters sitting in the yard.

Diesel generator engine. — A sixteen cylinder engine, similar to those used at the power plant used to supply the power for Fort Nelson.

A day that started off as a bust turned into a highlight on the trip. Even though, I appreciate looking at historical artifacts, what made this special was that I got a chance to meet Marl Brown and watch the sparkle in his eye as he showed off something in his collection.

Highly recommended.

Dawson Creek – British Columbia

We’ve been on the road seventeen days with 2600 miles on the odometer when we arrived at Dawson Creek yesterday (Friday; it’s scotch night). Dawson Creek is an important stop on our trip.

It’s our first stop in British Columbia.
The weather is warmer than we’ve had the last few days.
This completes the first section of Fred’s itinerary.

The most important reason though, is that Dawson Creek is where we pick up the famous Alaska Highway. As Fred said this afternoon, “We’ve come all this way just to get to the start.” If you want to drive to Alaska, this is the road that will get you there. Fairbanks is at the other end of this road, only 1500 miles away.

Gang under ALCAN Highway sign, — Fred, Sally, Deb, Anne and Jim take a moment to pose for photos under the highway banner.

The Army Corps of Engineers built the road in 1942 in eight months for military purposes during the second world war. The public didn’t have access to the road until 1948 and it wasn’t paved until the Alaska pipeline was built. Now the road’s covered with RVs. There’s a thriving cottage industry shepherding caravans of RVs on the same route that we’re taking.

Class A motoromes from a guided caravan. — A small part of a RV Caravan sharing the same campsite with us. Our paths cross often as we move from park to park.

A couple of days ago, I was afraid that we wouldn’t get into Dawson Creek. Last week they had torrential rains that dumped over four inches of rain in the area. The creek that runs through the middle of town (surprise, it’s also called Dawson Creek) cut the town in half by washing out the main road. Within three days, crews patched the roads enough to get traffic flowing again.

Damage on the Dawson Creek Broidge. — Only a couple of days before we arrived in Dawson Creek, over four inches of rain caused flooding on Dawson Creek and closed the major road through town.

We’ve now cleared the Canadian Rockies and the countryside is flatter, with farms and lots of timber. The towns are further apart, but they have all the franchises you’d expect at home. We even passed a Costco yesterday in Grand Prairie, which is something that we rarely do.

The geography of our route has changed from mountains to prairie as we pick up the ALCAN Highway.

Tomorrow morning we strike out for Fort Nelson. A leg that’s close to three hundred miles or 450km. Although the road is famous, it gets bad reviews for its condition. We’ll batten down the hatches and suffer through it, because now we’ve made a turn and are on our way to Alaska.

And so the adventure begins. The Alaska Journey

The gang poses for a portrait. — The gang takes a pack break to pose in front of the caravan. From left to right: Anne, Jim, Sally, Fred holding Gus and Deb.

Hold on to your hats, folks, because after a year of planning and packing, our road trip to Alaska and back to Arizona is finally kicking off tomorrow morning. We’ll be hitting the road from Congress, driving through Prescott, Verde Valley, and Flagstaff, and then spending the night in Kanab, Utah. I don’t know about you, but I won’t feel like I’m out of town until we’re on the other side of the San Francisco Peaks.

We’ve spent the last month getting our vehicles ready, but there’s always something else to pack. This morning, we had to make an emergency run to get longer chains because, of course, the hitch needed replacing. The pile of stuff in the dining room is smaller now, but I can’t shake this feeling that we’ve forgotten something… something important. But hey, at some point, you just have to get in the car and go. We’ll figure out what we forgot when it’s too late to turn back.

Our route will generally follow the I-15 corridor until we get to Montana, then we’ll cross the Continental Divide and head into Canada on the east side of the Rockies. From there, we’ll drive through the Canadian Rockies up to the Yukon Territory, and eventually reach Fairbanks.

We’ll make a loop through Alaska, hitting up Fairbanks, Denali, Anchorage, and the Kenai Peninsula before making our way back to Tok. And then, we’ll finally start the journey home. We plan to take a more scenic route on the way back, traveling along or near the coast until mid-California. But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves – who knows what kind of trouble we’ll run into along the way.

I’ll be posting updates from our journey, but it would take something pretty catastrophic to stop me from doing so (knock on wood). But hey, if something does happen, at least it’ll make for a good story, right? See you on the road!