Friday 8/13/99
Day 16: Dawson Creek, Grande Prarie & Hinton
We did not sleep very good last night as it was cold. When we got out of the ten there was frost att he top of it. It was a clear sky out when went to bed. Cindy also had one of her eyes swollen when she woke up. She thought it was from a moswuito bite. It was 5:30 when we left Buckingham Horse Creek park.. The kids went back to sleep in teh truck and we drove for a couple hours. We saw a few moose and also what I thought was a fisher. Cindy thinks it was a wolf or fox. I took some pictures but it was to far aways to get a good pictures. It ran as soon as I slowed the trucv down. This is mainly flat land and the Peace River valle. We reached Ft St John around 7:30 at Polly's. We weren't real impresseda as hot chocolate and toast were aboutt heonly things that they could make right. We ate and left as soon as we could without leaving any tip.
We continued south on highway 97 and drove thru more flat farm land until reaching Dawson Creek at 10:00. This town seemeda little mour touristy as it is the beginning of the Alaska/Canada highway. they have a post with O mile on it with reference to how many miles it is to Anchorage. This is a nice town to visit with many hotels, restaurents, stores and other little shops to visit. We stopped at the Visiter Center/Museum as tehstaff was helpful. The museum had artifacts from teh 1910's to 1960's, stuffed animals, rocks and a old train station. The staff told ustheywere familiar with Seattle because they two of our TV stations (KING & KIRO) on their cable up here. We went toa park where we took a nap adnlet thekids play on the. Before leaving town we also walked aroun the old part of town. We left around noon as we picked up another barrel of KFC on our way out to highway 2.
We drove thru more small towns as Hythe had two grain elevators and Beaverlodge was a little bit larger town that also depended on farming . We did drivie pst a company called 'Royla Flush Porta-Potty's Rentals. I had always wondered where they made those out-houses at. Grand Prarie would be the next placd that we stop as it was another large town . Shawna also informed us this was a busy town as it had a population of32,000 and more improtant, parking merters were only cents an hour. We got our and walked around tonw for a little while as we went inot a bookstore and did some window shopping. We next took highway 40 going south towards Grand Cache. From here the scenary did become more interesting with more trees and mountains. We didi drive by the Smokey River Coal Limited company which was a large plante along the river and seemed to be in the middle of nowhere right next to some mountains. It looked like it was a large employer of the area but we did not know what the economic conditions were for mining around here.
Going further south we saw a small black bear cub along the side of the road. I slowed down to take a picture, but once again I couldn't get close enough before it ran off. We stopped at Willmore Wilderness park where there were six corrals for horses, 14 campsites, hiking area including a trail to Hell's Gate. Hells gate is a large separation in rock where the Smokey river runs thru. We took a picture from the top but I believe you can get to the bottom with the horses.. After leaving here we passed by the Switzer Provencial Park which was along the river. ther ewere quite few camsites here and many families camoing here today. We left here and next took a steep gravel road that went to the Athabasca Tower. The back canopy did open up a couple times on us but we didn't lose anything. At the top , there was a view of the mountains and lakes that are in the Willmore Wilderness Park. It was a nice view even on a ovecst cloudy day.
We camdown the gravel road and it was time to start thinking about where we were going to stay. It was getting real dark out and looked like it was going to rain. It was still to earlly to pull over for camping so we continued south. We knew that there were many camp sites on the back roads near Jasper. But the more we looked at the clouds the more we wanted a hotel. We finaly drove into Hinton around 7:00 where there were lots of vacancies. We got a room at the Pines Motel and ate dinner at 'That Special Place' which seved greek food. There was a bad rain storm with lightening and thunder that lasted most of theevening. Ihad not seen lightening like this for quite while as it would light up the whold sky. It raind the whold night as we were supposed to go to Jasper and Banff tomorrow. We went to be arouund 11:00
We drove 450 miles today and 6500 total