“North To Alaska!”

I can finally say that familiar phrase “North To Alaska,” since we drove our first miles on the Alaska Highway on Monday. We went about 217 miles from Dawson Creek, and spent the night at Prophet Airstrip, formerly Prophet River Provincial Park, which is a lovely free boondocking (no hookups) spot about 1/2 mile off the road.

The only problem is that we had no Internet access. Neither ours nor Dennis and Carol’s Datastorm satellite dishes were able to tune to the right satellite. We’re pretty sure it wasn’t because of the trees; we just seemed to be in a ‘dead zone.’ So we had our first day without a blog. Or email. Or Internet access for any other purpose. It was also our (mine and Don’s) first day without TV. We put our DirecTV service on hold for 3 months, since we knew we wouldn’t be able to tune in the satellites as we went further north. We still received non-High Definition channels in Dawson Creek, but the only news channel we could find (all our network feeds are HD) was from San Diego. Imagine sitting in Northeastern British Columbia and getting Southern California traffic and weather!

So yesterday we enjoyed the peace and quiet, with a nice walk through the woods (Carol must have been walking backwards)…

…saw some scat (animal droppings) and feathers…

Don and Shadow took a separate walk…

…followed by our happy hour gathering…

…some yarn crafts…Marilyn shows off her progress and a bit of tangled yarn she had to sort out…

Umm, Carol, the baby cap is a bit small even for your petite head!

…a few cocktails, like Mary’s Skinny Girl Margarita…

…Claudette helped gather wood…

…and Jim helped build a campfire…

…Dennis got the fire started burning…

…then everyone except Jim moved away from the smoke!

We ate dinner in our own rigs and went to bed before dark. (Sunset is after 9:30 pm, and darkness doesn’t happen until much later.)

Today, Tuesday, we drove about 180 miles. We all saw wildlife, with varying degrees of success in getting photos of them. Mine all turned out like this:

I think you’ll see some better photos on Dennis and Carol’s and Larry and Marilyn’s blogs.

We saw some beautiful scenery today, but I don’t think we’ll be kayaking soon, at least not in this lake.

We had planned to stay at a place simply called “115 Creek,” a former Provincial Campground. However, when we arrived it looked pretty muddy so we went on down the road. The backup plan was to stay at Toad River Lodge, a campground with hookups. Before we got there, Dennis found an area next to a gravel pit, where there was plenty of room for all of us. We thought about going on to Liard River to enjoy the Hot Springs there a day ahead of schedule. But we decided just to stay here for the night.

The view from ‘on high.’

However, Dennis got even higher for his pics, so I’m sure they’ll be better.

As usual, happy hour was a fun time to share our day’s adventures. Notice Pat with her binoculars checking out the slope across the road. We spotted doll sheep and elk on the very steep hill. My camera didn’t reach far enough to capture them, but I’m sure Dennis got some good shots.

My final shot of wildlife for the day came out pretty good. I don’t think the critter survived, though.

Another night of boondocking isn’t too bad. We’re watching a DVD movie tonight while running the generator, and enjoying beautiful scenery and the lack of wind. A free night helps balance out the diesel prices. Now we can look forward to those hot springs tomorrow!