JITrekking: Chetwynd - where White Birches grow like grass OR Where are James VanderBeek, Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson?

As we stated in our last post, WiFi is spotty at best here in the Canadian hinterlands. So, this is the first opportunity we've had to write a blog post in a while. We are going to give it a go.

We last wrote you from Kamloops in lower British Columbia, Canada. This posting finds us at Muncho Lake, in UPPER British Columbia. We will be putting our first foot, wheel, etc. into the Yukon Territories tomorrow, Lord Willing.

We've taken a TON of pictures while on the trip and that's just SO FAR! The scenery here is beautiful. One of the main reasons Irene and I love to travel is to see what God put "THERE and nowhere else." (For those of you that are non-believers - what the BIG bang, quantum physics, gravity, blind chance, happenstance, and serendipity put "THERE and nowhere else.") But one thing we can all agree on is that beauty is beauty and we've dun seen some beauty on this here trip! (I know "dun" is spelled "done" in reality).

From Kamloops we headed toward Dawson Creek and the beginning of the Alaska Highway. One thing that is tough to get used to is that there isn't 22 different routes to take to get from the lower 48 to Alaska by car or RV - There is ONE route (Well, technically two - the road or the ferry, but that would kinda be dumb - Taking your RV on a ferry? Why didn't you just take a cruise to Alaska????

We are limiting ourselves to about 150-200 miles per day (for our Canuckian Readers that is 240-320 Kilometers per day). So, on the way to Dawson Creek we had to stop for numerous nights along the way: Williams Lake, Prince George and Chetwynd.

In Williams Lake (4/29/2016) we stayed at the Walmart overnight. It let us do some needed shopping. We also had to go to the Freightliner dealer there to get some maintenance done - Oil Change; Radiator Coolant Changed; Oil, Water Separator and Fuel Filters Changed. The next day we stopped in Prince George (4/30) for the night. We had to go to the Freightliner dealer again because the one in Williams Lake didn't have our Air Filter and their dealer in Prince George did. We also had to go to the Walmart again. To be truthful, the shelves in the Walmart stores in Canada that we have been to is only slightly better than the store shelves in Communist Russia!! (An slight over exaggeration to drive home a point). Large areas of the shelves have no stock on them at all and it isn't uncommon to have a single item of what is in stock.

Since May 2nd was Sunday, another reason we stopped in Prince George was we found out there was a congregation of the Lord's church there. It ended up being 3 widows. So, I was a "one-man-band" (without the instruments of course) there and led the singing, prayers and taught a lesson on "Becoming a Servant Like Jesus."

We set off for Dawson Creek and the Alaskan Highway again. This time we made it as far as Chetwynd "where the birch trees grow like grass on the mountainsides."

I've never seen almost pure stands of White Birches before. They are lovely. Here's one from today on the way to Muncho Lake North Rockies Lodge:

Chetwynd is where the inevitable occurred. I KNEW it would, I just wasn't sure WHERE it would occur. My DirecTV satellite dish is now no more than a mechanical beanie cap on the trekker. We were too far north to be able to pick up DirecTV.

The satellites that DirecTV ties into are in "Geosynchronous Orbit" with the United States. That means they orbit the earth at the same speed as the earth so they are always in the same position RELATIVE to the USA. That's how your DirecTV or Dish TV work. They know EXACTLY where the satellites they get their signals from are at all times because they are always in the exact same place all the time relative to the USA as the earth spins one time on its axis every 23 hours 58 something minutes and itself hurtles around the sun and does that once every 365 1/4 days. So, the satellite is now too far south for us to pick up its signals. Canada has another company (Rodgers I believe) that has satellites over Canada in Geosynchronous Orbit for their satellite subscribers. So, not only lousy WiFi and Internet, now NOWTV either!! YIKES, I am in withdrawal.

So after Chetwynd we headed to Dawson Creek and the Alaska Highway, Mile 0. For those of you who are in your early 40's or late 30's, I want you to notice that the name of the town in British Columbia, Canada is DAWSON (singular) CREEK, not "Dawson's Creek" like the TV show on the CW network in the early to mid-90s that made Katie Holmes and Joshua Jackson breakout stars. So, NO! I didn't see them.

We stopped for a couple of hours in Dawson Creek to get my Enalapril blood pressure prescription fulfilled. Who would have thought that in a country with which we have signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with that you couldn't have them fulfill a prescription from a US doctor. I mean, my doctor IS in North America; we sure have enough Canuckian doctors who have escaped Canada so they can practice medicine and we let them come in FREE. I get ads all the time on email pushing CHEAP, CANADIAN drugs. But, NOOOOOO, NOOOOO, NOOOOO a US prescription can NOT be filled in Canada. I was willing to barter. I'd have given them my money FREE, if they'd have given me the Enalapril FREE. But, NOPE, you've got to go to a Canadian doctor (though technically the doctor I saw wasn't Canadian, he was from South Africa so we had a great talk about his hometown (Somerset West) and the difference between Medical Education there and in the US). So, I pay C$100 ($75) to see this guy and he hands me the prescription I need to get another ACE inhibitor (Ramapril) drug and OFF WE GO. Onto mile ZERO of the Alaskan Highway.

From Dawson Creek (good-bye Katie) you head NNW toward Fort Nelson. This is named after the Field Marshall that defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. So, much for today's English History lesson. Somewhere between Chetwynd and Dawson Creek we went from Pacific Time to Mountain Time. But that's alright because somewhere between Dawson Creek and Fort Nelson we went back to Pacific Time. Thank goodness we have all of these self updating devices or I'd be totally lost as to what time it is/was and when and where.

Obeying our 200 mile/day (320 Km/day) rule we stopped for the night about 1/2 way to Fort Nelson at a wide spot in the road named Pink Mountain (No mountain, and No Pink). Time to play scrabble and download our pictures and sort through them and then play scrabble again.

The next morning (5/3) it was off to Fort Nelson and the turn back toward the west. More pictures to sort through, more scrabble.

This morning we set off from Fort Nelson. We had our first "bad weather" of the trip. It rained for about the first 50 miles of our 155 mile trip. As you leave Fort Nelson you are heading essentially west and then start heading south through a "pass" into the Northern Canadian Rockies area. Then you head south to head into another pass which enters the Muncho Lake watershed area. There you turn north again to shoot toward the Yukon Territories. We will be in Watson Lake and the Yukon Territory for the first time tomorrow.

Well, I'm going to shut up now and put some pictures on here. I know that most of you only care about them anyway and not my trivial drip and endless blathering.

Below: Picture of an area on the way from Pink Mountain

to Fort Nelson that had a forest fire last year.

Below: Some pictures of some of the beautiful valleys we've driven through along the way.

Below: An Interesting area of Buttes

Below: A picture that shows how thin the topsoil is in the Rockies - about 6 inches (20 cm). You can see where the sandstone under it is undercutting the roots of the trees as it erodes away.

Below: Some Pictures taken in the Canadian Northern Rockies

Below: A Couple of interesting rock formations.

Below: Two "Waterfalls" that are frozen in place right now

Below: 3 pictures of Summit Lake still almost frozen over

Below: A Picture of Muncho Lake in front of our RV this afternoon.

It still had a lot of ice around its edges also. The water is green in the picture above and the picture below because it has come off of a glacier or ice pack. The weight of the snow presses all of the oxygen AROUND the water molecules OUT. (This is what happens when 10" of snow in one day keeps decreasing in depth - even when it is too cold to melt). As the water goes down the river and is stirred through rapids and by surface area contact with the atmosphere it re-oxygenates and turns bluer.