And In To Canada

Wed. May 8, 2013 - Got off to another early start. Seem to be waking up at 6:00 am no matter when we go to bed. Much better day to travel today. Winds are not bad and the sky is clear. Border crossing took maybe 10 minutes max.! Pulled up to the booth and shut off the engine. They like for you to do that so they can hear and don’t have to shout out their questions. The guard looked at our passports and visually matched the photos to both of us. Asked us the usual questions: where are you from?, how long are you going to be in Canada?, how much alcohol do you have on board?, any weapons?, any tobacco or tobacco products? I admitted to our can of Bear Spray but he didn’t want to see it. Didn’t ask if we had a pet onboard and thus, did not ask for the health certificate that we so diligently purchased from our vet in Kansas!!! He then returned our passports, wished us a safe journey and we were off again. Away we drove and immediately became reacquainted with the metric system. Speed limits in Canada are posted in Kilometers per hour (KPH). We quickly reset our GPS to metric and used it to monitor our speed. The land in southern Alberta is lightly rolling farmland. Off on the far horizon you could barely see the Rockies but we won’t get near them for a day or two. Driving into Calgary is like any other major metropolitan drive. We weaved around construction barriers and made our way to the Flying J. Here the metric system pops up again. Fuel is priced and dispensed by the liter. I had to dig back into the notes from our previous Canadian travels and found my cheat sheet with conversion formulas. The temperatures are reported in Celsius so we also have to convert for that. For our purposes, any temps above 5 C (about 40 F) are good. We passed the afternoon in the RV parking area of the Flying J and plan on departing tomorrow after rush hour. A planned 5 hour drive so we should get to our next destination early to mid afternoon with plenty of time to relax. The intro photo is a shot of the sign along the highway. Notice... Diesel is actually a penny per liter CHEAPER than Unleaded.


Thur. May 9, 2013 - Not a bad nights sleep. Got up at the usual time and, in the process of getting ready to go discovered that the cars battery had gone dead. So I had to make an emergency repair and hooked up the battery charger. Got the battery to a level that the car would start and we could proceed. Hit a traffic delay as soon as we got on the highway in Calgary. Slowed us down for a bit. We made it through the city and, once again, the trip was relatively quiet. As we rounded around Edmonton, we hit another traffic snag. We creeped along and finally were on our way. A little west of Edmonton we branched off onto Highway 43 which we will follow into Dawson Creek. We found several rolling waves in the road. Last time we came through, we didn’t get road conditions like this until after Whitehorse. When we got to the CG, we discovered that all our clothes in the back bedroom closet had bounced off of the rod! We stayed in this CG last time we came up. The approach has improved, the road has been paved. But the CG is till dirt roads and short spaces. They put us in a slot they said was 75 feet long, but we stuck out at the front and the car stuck out in the back. I checked with the manager and he said it was OK. The park is surprisingly full for this early in the season. They have only been open a couple of weeks. (and three weeks ago they had 20+ inches of snow here.) Turns out that most of these folks are seasonal construction or oil field workers. The WiFi is supposedly better range but so far we have had to tell them to reboot the router once and it is out again. Luckily it worked long enough that we were able to make reservations at the next two CG’s. (just in case there are more folks traveling than we had planned on.) If we should come this way again, I think that I will replan the stops and bypass this place.  Not many photos of this stretch of road. It is mainly rolling farmland, nothing spectacular or noteworthy.

Fri. May 9, 2013 - Another sunny day for driving. Periodic winds but nothing bad. Several places along the highway were really rolling. I don’t remember this being bad until Whitehorse last time. (I know I said this yesterday but it is frustrating to be on a four lane highway and have to slow down to 40 mph to avoid having all our contents to be rearranged!) I didn’t recognize any landmarks along today’s route. Only when we came into Dawson Creek did things look familiar. Guess there was nothing remarkable in the terrain getting here that stuck in my brain. We started to see more forest and less farmland as we progressed today. Still relatively flat and treeless in Dawson Creek but that is about to change. We lost the four lane highway about halfway here and now it will be two lane all the way to Alaska. The scenery will become more mountainous as we start our climb over the Rockies. We unhitched the car today and did some grocery shopping to resupply for the next few days. We also took our Canadian change to the bank and got it exchanged for paper money. We had $38 in change!! Good WiFi here so we made email reservation requests for most of the remaining campgrounds that we plan to stay in. Figure, based on the forecast, we will stay on schedule from here on out.   Not as many folks in the campground here as there has been so far. No problems getting in. There is still more traffic on the road than I remember from last time but we’ll see if that continues once we are on the Alaska Highway. Daily bug cleaning duty still to go (have to get those bug remains off of the front of the coach as sometimes they can actually eat through the paint. Besides the fact that it makes for a really messy windshield if I don’t!) A nice meal out then some relaxation at the campsite. Oh, and by the way… it is not getting dark until around 10:00 pm!! I really like the longer days and can’t wait until we get set up in Moose Pass so we can enjoy them fully. 

     Saw this guy as we rounded a wooded corner. Startled the bejeebers out of me. Wasn't expecting it.

     Nice campsite in Mile 0 RV Park in Dawson Creek. They had just turned on the water at the sites so we lucked out there.

     This is the Pioneer Village adjacent to the RV Park. It has several exhibits that depict early life in the area. Admission is free but donations are accepted.