Gone With the Wind (our RV) back at Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway.
Major windshield damage from a small boulder just 25 miles from the finish.
One of many bears we saw the past couple of days.
Mama and baby bear
Big Horn Sheep crossing the road
British Columbia wildlife was everywhere.
Driving in a smoky rainstorm at 2:30 in the afternoon, just north of 100 Mile House, BC.
A Finish With A BANG!
Yesterday we drove from Fort Nelson to Prince George, British Columbia. We unintentionally logged over 500 miles. More on that in a minute.
I’ve lost count of all the wildlife we have seen. We have seen a ton of bears, moose, caribou, big horn sheep, dall sheep, fox, rabbits, deer, wood bison, a herd of wild ponies (they roam in the Yukon), lots of eagles and a variety of other birds. I’ve loved every minute of that! The only birds that got a little annoying were ravens. When we camped on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska, the ravens loved to jump on the roof of the RV and run around scratching and squawking in the morning. They’re sacred birds to the natives but a real pain in the butt to me. I didn’t appreciate their wakeup calls.
They say it’s a real badge of honor if you finish the Alaska Highway with no major stone chips or dents on your vehicle. There’s significant road work being done throughout the length of the Alaska Highway. There’s loose gravel flying around in a lot of places. We got through most of it unscathed. We were 25 miles away from the finish line when our luck changed. We got stuck behind a dump truck in the last construction zone when a small boulder the size of a softball bounced out of the dump truck in front of us, took a big bounce and made a direct hit on the windshield right in front of me. The bang it made was unbelievably loud. We now have a “stone chip” that’s about 10″ across and splintering on the glass. It covers about 25% of the windshield. It didn’t break the glass all the way through (thank God!) but it left a huge mark. We will wait until we get home to replace the windshield. Greg knows someone through his car business who does great work. I got the name of the business off the truck and left them a message about our unfortunate encounter. I’ll be shocked if I hear back from them.
We took a quick picture back at Mile Zero to celebrate a complete round trip of the Alaska Highway and then headed down BC 97 AKA The Cariboo Highway. For the first time in a while I didn’t book a campground in advance. We figured we would drive until we were tired and then find a campground for the night. The only problem was nothing on that highway looked very inviting. There’s a few Provincial Parks but they don’t have water or electric hookups. It was starting to warm up and we wanted to be able to use the air if needed and not run the generator. Quite a few of the RV parks looked like no one had used them in years. At one point, in the middle of nowhere, we saw a big road sign that said “Welcome Back”. That’s it. Not “Welcome Back to Nowhereville, BC” just “Welcome Back”. We looked at each other and said “Welcome back to where?” and just laughed. I just had this mental image of us stopping there and hearing banjos playing in the woods. We kept driving. About 8:30 we pulled into Prince George. It’s a decent sized town and had several RV parks to choose from. Most were closed but we found one whose owner answered the phone and said they had space. Finally, somewhere to stop for the night!
I’m a member of a couple Alaska RV groups on Facebook. I happened to be looking through posts last night and saw that someone posted about lightning strikes that caused wildfires in Clinton, BC yesterday. This morning on our way out of town, we stopped at Tim Horton’s for coffee and chai. Greg saw two older gentlemen having coffee and walked over and asked if they knew about the wildfires and told them we were headed to Kamloops. They mentioned there were only two roads that would get us there from Prince George. One was a pretty curvy drive through the mountains. The other was a little less curvy but was closed north of Clinton because of the fire. They said we should be okay because it was closed about 25 miles north of the fire. They also had heard that the town of Clinton was evacuated and lost in the fire last night. That kind of hit home. We hear about these fires on the news all the time. We never have been in the path of one though. We took their advice to stay on BC97 and take it to where it was closed and then head east on BC24 toward Kamloops. When we got to Williams Lake we could see the smoke haze starting to come over the mountains. About 30 miles north of 100 Mile House (where the road was closed) the smoke started getting pretty thick and we ran into a major rainstorm. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was as dark as night. We could only see a couple hundred yards down the road. It was eerily dark and the sky was a dark amber color. The rain combined with the smoke and soot made mud on the road. Greg’s phone had alarms go off three different times telling us to evacuate the area immediately. We just followed traffic through the storm to the road closure and headed east. I knew we were on the right path. All I could think was I knew we would be through the fire and storm shortly but there were a lot of people just south of us who have lost everything. We ended up on their evacuation route (both roads to Kamloops ended up being evacuation routes) and I have no doubt some of those people were in cars that were traveling alongside us. I don’t know how many times I prayed for those people today. I can’t imagine what they’re going through.
A couple days ago I started looking for golf courses that had RV parks nearby. I thought it would be fun to take Greg golfing near Kamloops for an early birthday gift since his birthday is in 2 days. I found the Chinook Cove Golf Club in Barriere, BC online. It’s situated on a ridge over the Thompson River and has an RV park attached. That sounded perfect so I booked it. We had always planned on driving through Kamloops on our way to central Washington to visit Greg’s cousins. After all our driving the past month, a day of golf also sounded great. We made it to Barriere safely this afternoon and checked into the RV park. I’ll let write about our golf experience in my next blog.
If you get a chance, please keep the people in British Columbia in your prayers. The wildfires they’re facing are no joke. There are three major fires burning withing 60 miles of where we are, all started by lightning strikes in dense forests. I have no patience for anyone who wants to politicize that. No one is to blame. These people have lost everything. They need our prayers.
More from the road in a couple days.
Hazy moonrise over the mountains in Barriere, BC.
