– Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Fort Nelson, British Columbia –

Today was a very light, easy day. Mark and I started our morning at 6am with a run through Dawson Creek. The Dawson Creek Trail is a little confusing to follow if you aren’t a local, but we did manage.

This evening, Mom was reading the local news on her iPad and saw that they’ve had issues with a flasher on the Dawson Creek Trail in the last couple of days. Maybe we were just lucky, but we seem to have missed him. After our delightfully uneventful run, we headed back to the hotel to have breakfast and shower. We didn’t leave until after 9am this morning. It was magical.

Today began our trek down the Alaska Highway. Not far out of Dawson Creek, we made took a detour onto a section of the Historic Alaska Highway that is no longer in use. The detour took us across Kiskatinaw Curved Bridge. The bridge is made entirely of timber.

It was a little scary for Dad and me. We are both afraid of heights, and the bridge sloped down on one side. It had a few damaged boards and looked like it had seen better days. It was built in 1942, after all. Regardless, it was really cool. A wooden bridge on trellises over a river? Yes, please.

We didn’t see much for a while after that. The road was pretty empty, and we didn’t make any stops for some time. We did end up stopping at Pink Mountain, which is an unincorporated community in British Columbia. The area boasted a gas station, an inn, and a restaurant. That’s about it. They also had signs up that dogs were not allowed out of vehicles. I was not amused. Where else were we supposed to let them out? What harm could they have done? Since our furry friends weren’t allowed, we pushed on.

We ran into a little bit of construction, but it wasn’t terrible. It did rain again today, in case you are keeping track. When it quit raining and we drove out of the construction, we stopped for lunch at Buckinghorse River Wayside Provincial Park.

Yesterday at Walmart, we replenished our picnicking supplies, so we had lots of lovely things to eat for lunch. All of the picnic tables were empty when we arrived. We needed bug spray for the first time, which made me sad. I was glad to have it, in spite of how much I hate wearing the stuff.

The park itself was quite pretty. The picnic tables were just a short walk away from the river, and when we finished eating, we walked over to take a look. My parents poked around amongst the rocks, dreaming of finding gold. Sabre just wanted to be held. And Ripley, as usual, was super excited about everything. The rocks had so many interesting smells!

When we finished with lunch, we didn’t have much left to go in our drive for the day. We did drive past a section of the Alaska Highway that had been on fire very recently. It was still smoking in places. From what I read online, the road was closed through the area a couple of days ago. We were lucky that we didn’t have any issues getting through.

We made it to Fort Nelson at 4pm. We stopped at our hotel and dropped off our stuff, then explored the town. There isn’t much to see. Fort Nelson is pretty small, I have to say. It is still a pretty little town, and we enjoyed looking around.

We had a quick dinner and came back to our hotel to relax a bit more. We have a relatively easy drive tomorrow, as well. We didn’t do laundry today for my mom, so I think we will have to tomorrow.

– Trip Total : 3,317 miles –