Alaska 2009 - Day 2

Alaska 2009
Day 2 – 2009-08-30
My sleeping arrangements are great, I have a twin mattress in the back of LC, my -15 degrees sleeping bag, a micro-fleece liner and a blanket. Plush huh? I went to bed with just the blanket, thinking that would be enough. It was for what I think was a couple of hours. I then grabbed the liner, and slept a little longer. A couple more hours pass and I am breaking out my sleeping bag. Ahh.. much better.

I woke up at my normal time of 5:59am, one minute before the proverbial alarm clock that never seems to wake me up because I am awake before it goes off. It is light out and I start the coffee. I love making coffee when camping. The percolator is relaxing to watch. My companion was cold, but not enough to keep him complaining for very long. I guess the tent must have been cold. The campground is nice and after the cups and thermos are filled, we are off.

Our morning destination is the Williams Lake visitor center. The Milepost says that it is a cool building. Guess what? It is. We arrive 15 minutes early, and they let us in anyway. Canadians are very nice and welcoming. We grab a couple of nice lounge chairs and plug in our electronics. I transfer Day 1’s video to the portable hard drive, access the internet and update my facebook. I send the mail to my family and friends with my blog address and my picture store. We have a toasted bagel, buy the touristy stuff. I then chat with the staff for awhile. Apparently to the west is being evacuated because of a very large fire, but it will not impact us going north. So we are good. What a cool place.

On the road again we read that Prince George is our next stop and it is the 4th largest city in BC. We want a quick release for the video camera to allow us to remove the camcorder and adventure outside of LC quickly. We then drive around (literally) Prince George for the next 2.5 hours. Apparently Canadians do not know it but Future Shop has gone out of business, because they have one still up and running. They do not have what we want, but the store reminds me of the good times I used to have in Future shop in Bellevue. We finally find what we want in London Drugs. The lady helping us is really cool and goes way out of her way to help us. I told you Canadians are really nice. We stop at the PG boy [picture to come] on our way out of town, yeah touristy but what the heck.

By now our dawdling has eaten up most of our day. We need to make a run for Dawson’s Creek. All that driving in town without the blinkers is nerve racking. We make a pit stop for food and head north. As we head out we start noticing the dead lodge pole pines. We have both heard of the spruce/ lodge pole pine beetle problem, and I have even seen some of the damage in Washington. The farther north we go the worse it gets. 8 out of 10 trees are dead. Yes standing dead, black and contrasted against the younger live trees. Something needs to be done about this. It is shocking about how much it has impacted these forests. I recommend looking this up and getting informed. I have no idea what to do about it… actually I have an idea, lets bioengineer a bug that only feeds on the beetle, is sterile and only lives for 3 months. Then let’s air drop these bioengineered bugs all over these forests. Okay that is extreme and maybe we should just let nature do what it will. Or maybe we have messed with the environment so much that it is unrecoverable. I just wish I knew more. I guess I will look it up when I get internet back.

We buckle down and drive. We have a goal and it looks like our destination is about 50 miles south of Dawson’s creek. Close enough and tomorrow we can get an auto shop to look at the blinkers. As we near our destination, there are several homes and lots of signs on the road to watch for Moose. I stare ahead and I see something, it darts across the road and almost looks like it jumped across the road. What the heck? As we pass by it is a guy on a dirt bike. Yes, he jumped almost the whole highway. I now know what they do for fun up here.

The GPS is set and as we get closer we do not see our campground, no signs or anything. The milepost says we are here, but there is no provincial campground. We drive 5 more miles and nothing. We turn around and look for it. Nothing, it does not exist. Now we have a problem. We will not make it to Dawson’s Creek without breaking into the spare gas, and we have no place to camp, and it is almost dark out. We find a secret dirt road…. Shhh, there are houses. We get closer to the river and find an abandoned fire pit. This looks good enough. We setup camp, quietly. Then proceed to copy Day 2’s video to the portable hard drive. Now to watch that dude jump the highway… he is there, just too blurry to see. Oh well bed time after a beer. One beer and I am beat and off to bed. Wait I need to type of the days journal. I will upload when I get internet. I am done after this period.