Fort Nelson, BC

Good morning, my friends. It was another long day of driving yesterday. We'll have a shorter drive today. We'll end up at Liard River Hot Springs. There's a lovely area for soaking in the natural hot springs, and we're taking two days to enjoy it.

Before we got on the road yesterday, I finished off the first of the Raggedy & Friends blocks. I don't have an iron along, and so I'm showing you the wrinkly version. I uploaded these pictures yesterday afternoon, and I noticed I'd neglected to stitch one of the buttons on Raggedy Andy's pants. I've fixed that now.

There wasn't much to photograph on yesterday's drive. Mainly, we saw lots of trees on both sides of the road, and it rained off and on.

We're in the Northern Rockies now, and so the roads are often up steep grades, and then down steep grades on the other side. Coming over a rise yesterday, we could see a deep valley on the other side.

Looking to the left of center in the image below, you can see the newest Kiskatinaw Bridge. 

The historic bridge is closed to traffic now. We might have gone out to see this while we were in Dawson Creek, but the weather and our laziness prevented that. The Kiskatinaw Bridge was part of the original Alaska Highway project. It was bypassed in 1978, reportedly because it could not safely support heavy-load oil and gas trucks (those carrying more than 25 tons). Those heavy trucks had to drive across the river instead! Contracted by a Canadian company, construction of this engineering marvel took nine months to complete. It was the first curved wooden bridge built in Canada and today, few like it remain. Here's an image I found online.

(Image credit: "Kiskatinaw Bridge, West of Dawson Creek, British Columbia" by Arthur Chapman is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.)

When we're traveling, we're using an app called RVParky. It allows me to map our route, choose places to stay, and write notes about things we might consider doing or seeing. One of my notes was something from one of the Alaska Facebook groups I follow. It said: stop at the Visitor Center in Taylor, B.C., to get a free refrigerator magnet. Well. Who can resist that? Happily, Taylor was on our route.

It was a quick and easy stop just off the main highway.

They had some pretty blooming things just outside the door.

This might be the most beautiful Bleeding Heart I've ever seen.

And, sure enough. Lookie there! Free! I live for this stuff.

Also, Mike forgot to bring a hat, and so we bought one there. It made is feel better about just stopping in for free stuff.

The patch on the front is created by a local artist. Here's the information that was included on the attached tag.

All along the way we saw warning signs for wildlife. We often see the diamond-shape with a picture of some animal inside, but yesterday's signs seemed more urgently seeking our attention.

We saw a ranched bison herd, but otherwise, no wildlife except for two instances of roadkill: a deer and a bear. Sad.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, we were a little concerned about the wildfires burning along our route. This was something from a Facebook page I'm following, and so we felt confident we'd be able to get through. Also, the woman at the Taylor visitor center told us the road would be open.

We were driving under thick cloud cover yesterday. As we came over this rise, the gray turned to more of a pinkish brown color, and we knew we were seeing smoke.

Farther along, the plumes of smoke were unmistakable. We couldn't see flames, but we saw a fire-fighting helicopter flying over.

Looking a little to the right, we could see another plume. Fortunately, the wind was blowing the smoke in the opposite direction, but we could still smell it.

There was plenty of burn scar in this section of the landscape. The image below shows what's left from a previous fire. 

Okay, so if nothing changes, I believe we're through the worst of the wildfire areas in British Columbia. Hopefully, we won't encounter more.

We had a chance to try out our on-the-road coffee maker. Here's another of Mike's 3-D printing efforts. He created an adapter that fits over his regular insulated coffee cup. The little coffee machine fits right into the adapter and drips the coffee into his cup. It takes a while to set it up and wait for it to heat up. But in about five minutes, he had a cup of coffee. No stopping required. 

In the image above, the coffee maker appears to have a cord attached. Actually, it's battery operated and rechargeable. The cord there is from Mike's phone. Also, the water came from my water bottle there on the left.

Here, we crossed over the Peace River just before reaching our final destination at Fort Nelson.

It's named for Admiral Horatio Nelson of the British Navy.

We encountered frequent wind gusts that might have blown us off the road. Mike was gripping the steering wheel hard. I took this picture to show you how the flags are straight out in the wind.

From there, we were just a few minutes away from our stopping place for the night.

We'd hoped we would see the auroras last night, and we're told Fort Nelson is a good place to see them. We set an alarm and got up at 1:00 a.m. to see them, but the sky was still too bright. Land of the Midnight Sun, you know. Oh well. We've started to believe these celestial events are just not intended for our viewing pleasure. 

Okay, so we'll have some breakfast and then be on our way. I should say here that I'm still trying to keep up with my daily blogging schedule. If a day goes by with no post from me, it's probably because we're "boondocking" someplace and have no electricity. I can operate the laptop on battery-power alone, but it might not be enough to get through a whole post. So, all of that to say that if I miss a day, it'll be because I can't get online or because I don't have electricity. We'll have power at our next stop, but we're thinking of doing some boondocking down the road, and so we'll just have to wait and see how that goes.

All right, my friends. Breakfast is next, and then we'll be on our way to Liard River Hot Springs.