It’s a REAL Bear! and It’s the REAL Frontier! and It’s the Ultimate Adult Summer Camp!

Dawson Creek, Canada 

Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway (ALCAN)

June 1 - June 2, 2016

Left Crooked Creek PP this morning to start our drive to Dawson Creek, BC. We had a wonderful evening of potluck, fresh fish from Michael and John's big catches of the day and dancing from the 80's!!! 

Again, another stunning day of driving.  It’s hard to take a nap or read because you just don’t want to miss anything.  As was the case today.  We were the only ones for miles on the 97, which is now a 2

lane highway.  Kevin spotted him first, “there’s a big bear!”, I thought it was fake?  We had just passed a little town that did major chainsaw carvings and had seen many wooden carved bears, so I didn’t really believe it at first.  But sure enough, it was a BIG black bear standing on his hind legs just

staring at us.  Unbelievable.  (sorry no picture as it was so quick and so cool)

Forests are as thick and far as one can see.  Forests, rivers, lakes, creeks and beautiful green everywhere.  It will be hard to come back home in August to see brown everywhere.  Kevin was saying how wonderful it would be to be able to just use a tiny portion of one of the million rivers and fill up the Santa Ynez, just for 1 day!  Oh well.  

Logging trucks, a few really dirty pickup trucks and some campers are the only vehicles you see up this far north.  It’s still early for the Alaska travelers so we really are alone on the roads.  

I have found it very interesting how strong our olfactory sense is connected to our memories.  The smells of the wet forests and the damp earth bring me right back to my years growing up in Germany.  Riding through the forests on my horse, walking with my mom through the small Bavarian villages, visiting my Oma and Opa in the country and going with my Tanta Klara to her little garden plot to harvest vegetables.  It all comes back in a flash when we are hiking or riding our bikes thru these Northern Lands.  

Driving is never dull and the Milepost (the Bible for traveling to Alaska and thru Canada) has been more than entertaining.  Everything is so different.  We get a mile by mile dialogue which not only details various geography, but also history.  We sort of feel like we are living a documentary of the Great Northern Frontier.  Seems like we are trapped in time with the early expeditions of the famous explorers, John Jacob Aster and Sir Alexander MacKenzie in their epic journeys to the Pacific in the late 1700’s.  

Early afternoon we arrived at Dawson Creek, BC.  This is where the road ended until 1942, when the Alaska highway was started. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the construction of the highway was deemed a military necessity as a supply road to defend North America agains the Japanese.  If you are at all interested in this amazing event, check out the PBS documentary on the Building of the Alaska Highway.  

Day 2 of Dawson Creek we spent like complete tourists!  Had our photo taken at the O MlLE marker by our lovely guide, Austin, who then took us into the "Alaska House" and gave us a personal tour with bits of History of the construction of the Alaska Highway.  Walked the little town, bought more rain and mud gear, took a great walk through the city park that went through a forest with moose tracks and beaver damns.

Enough of that.  So we will stay here for 2 days and stock up on groceries, truck maintenance, airstream cleaning, laundry and all the conveniences of modern life.  Then we head off for the remaining 1523 miles of the Alaska Highway.  Here we come Land of the Midnight Sun and gold rush fever……..