Liard Hot Springs

We get a late start this morning. Folks on both sides of us left early, never heard them leave. Today we leave around 8:30 and make a quick stop at McDonalds for coffee and a muffin to go.

Today we are crossing the Muskwa Mtn Range, much more interesting terrain than the flat and rolling forests yesterday. See lots of wildlife, Bear, Sheep and a Caribou.  The sheep are shedding their winter coats and are looking pretty mangy.  

Stop for gas at Toad River Lodge a fairly busy place. Another unpaved gas station. The interesting part is the pump does not take credit cards.  You pump your gas, then park your car, then go in and tell them how much gas you pumped and then you pay. Good thing old people have cell phone cameras.

We get to Liard Hot Spring around 2:00 and get one of the last spots.  A couple got talking with Linda as I was parking and were interested in the Travato since they were looking a various Class B RVs.  After we give them a “tour”, Linda makes lunch and I go back the office to check in for the site we took.  After lunch, I investigate why our bathroom vent fan is not working. The switch is bad, hopefully I can jury rig another switch when we get to Whitehorse.

After I clean up and get our bathing suits and towels and head to the Hot Springs. Another warm day 85 degrees. Great, a hot day at the hot springs. One unique feature of this RV park is there is an electric fence around the perimeter to keep the wildlife out. We have to go through a  hand opening gate to walk to the Hot Springs. I can’t pass up acting like I am getting electrocuted to entertain my wife, not realizeing there was another couple approaching. She laughs and he, I am sure is thinking “what a dork”.

Electric Fence

The hot spring was nice, except there were a lot of good size flies all around. BC version of horse flies, but bigger. We walk back to the RV and make dinner, fortunately the files are not too bad at the campsite.

I am a dork, with a FLIR IR iPhone Attachment

Fort Nelson

We got up around 6:00 AM and were on the road before 8:00AM.  Stopped in town to fuel up, since gas is only going to get more expensive as we head north.  Nice slightly cool morning, still warm enough to wear my replacement Flip-Flops that I bought yesterday.. For the next hour driving north we are going through rolling farm land, mostly pasture, although we see few cows. 

After an hour we get to Fort St. Johns, a surprisingly large town, Superwalmart and anything other chain store found in anywhere USA. Another hour north, farm lands disappear and it gets hillier. We are in logging and gas country. We stop for a break at a gas and convenence store like any in the USA, except its the first gas station I have ever seem unpaved, very dusty. Non food items on the store shelves that don’t sell quickly have a coat of dust on them.

The highway has lots of rest areas, some paved with pit tolets and garbage cans other large unpaved pull offs.  RV’s do stop and spend the night at these rest areas.

We get to Fort Nelson and I am surprised to see that it is 87 degrees, did not notice the outside temperature gauge until we stopped for gas at Fort Nelson. Had planned to boondock at one of the roadside rest areas, but now I want to stay at an RV park for power for our AC. AC and running our generator is just too noisy.

We are staying at the Triple G Hideaway RV Park in Nelson.  As the evening progresses a lot more RV’s and tenters arrive. We visit the local musuem, unfortunately they will be closing a ½ hour after we get there so they do not charge us.  I could of spent hours there, Linda not so much.

Bug covered RV

Main building of local museum 

A week or so ago I bought another Lucy light, an excellent solar light we use on our sailboat, unfortunately I forgot to bring any of them.  I also bought a new Flash light the size of a small baseball bat.  Now that we are getting further north and night time starting to disappear, they are seeming to be useless purchases.  Last night the sunset at 9:45PM tonight it sets at 10:30PM, sunrise at 4:00AM. I will not be staying up to see the stars, not sure it will even get dark enough here.

Lucy Lights

Dawson Creek

Cora’s breakfast

We head out to “Cora Breakfast and Lunch”, a top rated breakfast spot in Grande Prairie. They lived up to the rating, excellent breakfast, just too many great options to pick from.  We try a couple different places to get our propane filled. This RV has a built-in 6 gallon tank that we used for the stove top, hot water heater and hot air furnace.  The furnace has probably used the majority of the propane.

RV is getting pretty dirty, good the bike is coverd

After we run around to a number of stores looking for odds and ends on our list, we leave for Dawson Creek, just 1-½ hours away or ½ hour if you include passing into the Pacific time zone.  We stop at the visitor center and take our pictures at the famous Alaska Highway sign like every first time Alaska bound tourist.

Mile 0, we are just getting started

ALCAN history

https://dot.alaska.gov/nreg/akhwy75/akhwy75.shtml

We stay at the Mile Zero Camp ground and have a relaxing late afternoon. Even though we are on the eastern side of the next time zone the sun still seems to set nearly as late as yesterday.  I guess traveling north obviously doesn’t help. The sunset tonight at 9:40PM. Not as bad as Fairbanks, sunset today is 12:40 AM and sunrise is 3:08 AM so it does not get dark, just twilight.  We have insulated blackout shades for all the windows, so we can make it pretty dark inside.  Just need to pay attention to the time and go to bed at a decent hour.

Mile Zero Camp Ground

9:40 PM sunset

I installed a new radio with SiriusXM before we left, but did not switch my account from our car home over to the RV.  We have been listening to SiriusXM via Cell, which we will have a lot less of for the next few weeks. I am getting frustrated that using the Satellite antenna, in the last day or two we are getting continuous interruptions on all stations.  I assume I have a loose connection and pull the radio out this evening to check, a big PITA.  I don’t see any problems with the connections.  So I search on the range for SiriusXM and learn you can not get it in Alaska and northern Canada. We are more the ½ way north through BC, the limit of the range, Shit !

Grande Prairie

We get up early and are gone by 8:00am, speedy for us. Tried to get a propane fill in town, but no luck due to a malfunctioning machine.

Waiting for the “Rocky Mountaineer”

Another quick stop for another Scone, but wasn’t as good as yesterday’s.

Our main event today is driving up to Miette Hot Springs.  The hot springs are a couple of swimming pools where the water is cooled down to 105F from the 122F water that bubbles up our of the ground. Beautiful location amongst the cloud shrouded mountains.

Then we head for a long afternoon drive to Grande Prairie on Highway 40, “The Scenic Route to Alaska”. Some very remote stretches with no Cell connection.  We get a lot of heavy rain so the scenery was wasted. Lots of logging and pulp mills. As we get closer to Grande Prairie there are lots of gas and oil wells.

We are surprised how large of a city Grande Prairie is.  After a stop at Costco we head to “Great Northern Casino” to sign in to a free overnight in their parking lot. Since it is late and rainy, we don’t want to bother with an RV park.  After we sign in we plan to have dinner at the Casino, Unfortunately they only have one restaurant and Thursday night is Karaoke night.  The loud and off key singing would not make for a great dining experience so we have dinner back in the RV.

Jasper - Maligne Canyon

We shower before breakfast.  The shower facilities are very clean and efficient at this National Park campground. The water temperature is preset, just warm enough to shower, but cool enough we won’t be taking a long shower. Plus the added fact you have to press a button every 15 seconds for the water to keep flowing. It gets you clean and out quickly.

After breakfast we head to town to look for a pair of flip-flops, mine which managed to make it to the Bahamas and back disappeared in the last day or so. No luck in our f-f search, but we find an excellent bakery, The Bear Paw.  We get Raspberry White Chocolate scones, Yum.

We drive north of town to Maligne Canyon.  I had biked there 50 years and ago camped our in the woods, when the then local campground was full. Slept in my plastic Tube tent for protection from the bears, that way they could have a take-away container for the leftovers.

1973, A tent or food wrap ?

Lower Maligne Canyon, 1973

Apparently I did not go to the top of the Canyon. Some very interesting waterfalls that I don’t remember seeing and a ton more tourists.

Jasper

 June 25 Jasper

My goal today is to stop at the Athabasca glacier on the Ice Fields Parkway. I rode my bike from Baniff to Jasper about 50 years when there was considerably less tourists, certainly none from China at that time.  The old hotel there had and all you could eat lunch that was popular with the bus tours groups then.  Bus loads of old ladies didn’t eat much. Well peddling north, all the southbound bicyclists keep telling us you have to stop and have lunch there.  Back then, bike touring, 50 to 100 miles a day, burned a lot of calories and you could eat anything and everything and still see all your ribs. 

Well, they were not pleased having these biking gluttons stopping by for their all you can eat lunch. After we finished, the friends I was riding with, found some lawn space  for a snooze to recover from our high calorie stupor, before we headed downhill towards Jasper.

That hotel has been replaced with a much larger building to accommodate the large number of tourists and tourist buses. No “all you can eat” leisurely lunch buffet.  Now a couple restaurants and cafes move the bus loads of tourists quickly through. 

Like my hairline the Athabasca Glacier has receded considerably over the last 50 years. 

1973

2024

We head to our campground in Jasper for two days, before we head towards Dawson Creek, Mile 0 on the Alcan highway to Alaska. It's kind of the inverse of Mile 0, starting at Norfolk Virginia, heading south on the ICW (Intercoastal Waterway) to Florida.

At the Campground registration we are parked number 3 in a line of 4 silver Class B Ram ProMaster RV’s, all from different RV vendors.

Sunny evening for a change

Campsite visitors