Saturday, August 1, 2009

Dawson Creek: More Than a TV Show

We got off to an unhurried start, knowing that we'd end the day one time zone farther west (and thus, we had an extra hour to burn). After tanking up in Grand Prairie, we proceeded to Dawson Creek, the start point of the Alaska Highway (built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1942 in just eight months), where we stopped at a museum.









In Fort St John we somehow resisted the temptation to eat lunch at Tim Horton's.



We saw a several bikers headed south (perhaps going to Sturgis), and this guy headed north (apparently pedaling his way to Fairbanks).



And we saw lots of flowers (some sort of pink lupin).



But most significantly, we saw something we hadn't seen anywhere along the first 2000 miles of the trip ...




Ahhh ... for this old El Paso boy, it feels good to be in the mountains.

7 comments:

Jerry said...

Let us know when you cross over into Alaska so that I can dispense with translating everything into French.

Faites-nous savoir quand vous croisez plus d'en l'Alaska de sorte que je puisse me passer de traduire tout dans le Français

You ought to see my Canadian passport with the Queen's request for my safe passage as one of her subjects translated into French.

Vous devez voir mon passeport canadien avec le Queen' ; demande de s de mon passage sûr en tant qu'un de ses sujets traduits en Français.

joyce said...

Jerry is a show off. But, we love him as he is our brother-in-law. eh?

I am glad you are finally in the mountains. Ah, the fresh air...the trees...the critters...

And to think after all this time, and all these miles, you finally arrived at mile marker zero. wow

joyce said...

http://www.bellsalaska.com/myalaska/alaska_highway.html found this neat list

joyce said...

http://explorenorth.com/library/roads/alcan-signs.html

oh, no. some of the brass signs are wrong.

Bob said...

Joyceee--
Actually the air isn't very fresh. It seems what isn't smoke is mosquitoes. But the sights are beautiful. Thanks for the pointers about the highway. None of the signs that report the length of the highway in miles is right. When Canada went metric, they re-measured the length of the improved route in kilometers and drove kilometer markers every two kilometers. So the mile markers in the U.S. won't ever match up with the kilometer markers in Canada.

Jerry--
We'll be passing back into the U.S. around noon on August 4th. Thank you for your help in keeping this blog compliant with Canadian law.

Mrs. JP said...

Wow, I'm learning so much thanks to your trip. I really don't know how you resisted that lovely restaurant. There was a limo parked there!!

Cameron N said...

Thanks ffor sharing this