I thought that I had overslept this
morning but when I looked at the clock, it was 4 am. The sun was so bright, I
was sure that it was closer to 7 or 8.
We are enjoying a day off in Dawson
Creek, mile zero of the Alaska Highway. Thanks to Craig's excellent driving, we
made it here a day early so we are quite happy to take a day off to see the
town, take pictures and process where we have been while thinking ahead about
where we are going.
It was a beautiful day in the 80's.
We are staying at an rv park right at the beginning of the Alaska Highway.
There is a Pioneer Village attached to the park here and we enjoyed walking
through all the old mostly log cabin structures and seeing the homes, churches,
schools, stores, etc. from the 1920's and 1930's mostly. It made me think of my
maternal grandmother, Lois Blaney and her home in Federal Way.
We also went to the Visitor Centre
and got some excellent advice and information about the highway ahead as well
as taking the obligatory tourist pictures of the Mile Zero markers in
the street. There is such a fascinating story about how the highway was built.
It was built in 1942 by the Army Corps of Engineers and a lot of soldiers who
knew absolutely nothing about building roads. We watched a PBS documentary about
building the highway which blew us away. The 1500 mile highway from Dawson
Creek to Fairbanks was built in just 8 months under the worst conditions you
can imagine. It's truly a miracle that it was completed especially considering
that there was a war going on at the time although that was the reason for
prioritizing the project for the military.
My family will appreciate that we
had lunch at Mary Brown's Fried Chicken (my mother's name is Mary Brown).
Fittingly, it wasn't anything special except for the name. Craig says it was
better than Kentucky Fried Chicken and he's the expert when it comes to fast
food.
We were so impressed with the story
of the Alaska Highway that we drove up the road a ways to see a curved wooden
bridge that the army built as part of the original highway. It was quite
impressive but also a little scary as when we drove over it, we could see how
much the wood has eroded and weathered over the last 70+ years. Still, it was
quite a feat of engineering and building for it's day. That part of the
highway is no longer used but has been retained as part of a park.
Craig decided to go hit some golf
balls in the afternoon while I did a little laundry. He barely made it
back when the electrical storms which had been on the horizon for a while
hit here and it poured buckets. Had he been on the golf course, he would have
gotten soaked! It rained so hard that we had to retract our canopy because
it was filling up with rain.
We will be up early tomorrow to hit
the road. We don't know quite what is ahead but have a basic plan to spend the
next week or so driving the 1500 miles to Fairbanks with many stops along the
way. Don't know how much internet we will be able to access along the way so
this might be it for a while for the blog.
Sorry no pictures today. The internet here is too slow for uploading. Hopefully I will find a good connection in the next couple of days and post pictures from Dawson Creek.
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