Day 16 - Fort Nelson, British Columbia

Travel   From: Dawson Creek, BC   To: Fort Nelson, BC   Distance: 287 mi (461 km)   Travel time w/brks: 6 hr 21   Distance since start: 4,563 mi (7,337 km)

Thursday 7/6/2006

We woke up to rain. I was not exactly looking forward to getting hooked up, but it had to be done. The gravel outside the trailer had turned into thick mud, almost like clay. I asked the kids to stay back in the trailer before coming out. After everything had been setup, I thought it would be a better idea to pull the trailer out of the campground and onto the road before asking the kids to transfer over to the truck. That turned out to be a marginal win. The side of the main road did not have a break down lane and it was pure mud there too! With everyone transferred over we headed down the hill towards Dawson Creek and our turnoff north. Just a few hundred yards down from the campground is the official "mile 0" of the Alaskan Highway. I meant to take a picture of the sign, but it was raining and decided to keep going. We had some issues with the copilot who led us off astray, but this was quickly taken care of and we were back on the Alaskan Highway again.

I stopped in Fort St John to see if I could get plastic lens covers for his head lights. But no luck; no one had it in stock. I was able to find a place called Automagix, on the way out of town, where I was able to buy plastic film that could be cut-to-fit. The guy sold it to me for $35, including some tools to mount it. Compare that to the $75 that the campground wanted for the same thing including installation (not a very good one mind you).

Not far from Dawson Creek we stopped at a place selling honey. They had a couple of bee hives indoors, sandwiched into stands. You could actually see the all the bees inside the hives. They had also marked the queen in each hive with a white paint dot; the queen does apparently not sting a human if you are gentle with it. I asked how long the season was for bees around here and the lady responded that the first frost basically took out the bees around the first week of August. Ouch.

Karl is exploring bee hives in glass; they fly in and out through the tubes in the wall above

Lots of bees, wax and honey

Taste test with Cheerios right on their parking lot confirms it: good stuff!!

As we continued up north, the air filled with a smoky haze from the forest fire that was still burning. We could not see the location of the fire, but we could see that the air was affected for 60-70 miles or so. There were occasional hills and some 10% grades as we got closer to Fort Nelson. I saw more and more pickup trucks as well as heavy duty 18 wheelers. Many of the 18 wheelers have big bars mounted over their grills to catch smaller animals such as deer.

Typical rolling hills on highway to Fort Nelson (double lane on "climbing" side)

We have learned that there is quite a bit of fossil fuel buried here in some sort of oil-sand. You can see plenty of evidence of this, in terms of trucks and dirty equipment. At one place we went by what might have been some sort of depot or even a well; it had a burning gas tower in it. It is clear that this area, in general, is a happening place. As we rolled into Fort Nelson we could see that this was not much of a town. Only the main roads are paved and the rest are dirt roads. In general, you can see that this area is being developed. There is a lot of machinery around. The town has a few gas stations. As can be expected, the fuel is getting more and more expensive. It was raining. The campground did not look too interesting. It did not have paved roads and things were generally dirty. Several camp sites appear to be occupied by "workers". These could have been associated with the logging, energy of government. Following all the driving in mud with the toy cars back in Dawson Creek, the boys started to clean the cars in the "luxury car wash"

Erik is blow drying toy cars in as part of the "luxury car wash"

We did some laundry and worked on the Internet, since we had a good connection at this campground. Isabella and Erik went out to see if they could not do some fishing, but there was not a place for it. The campground was generally without interest. For dinner we ate macaroni and cheese. We watched the movie Undercover Brother on DVD, which was quite funny.

Campground   Name: Westend RV Park   Our hookups: Water, 30 Amp and Sewer   WiFi: Yes and several bars (free)   GSM service: None   TV Channels: Unknown   Cost: $25/night   Reservation mode: Phone call

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All Pictures (c) 2006 Hamnqvist, Background features the walls from the Honey Place.