On
Thursday morning, we left Fort Nelson, British Columbia around 8:30. Following a sub-par continental breakfast and
a Dansko sighting at the Super 8, we set out for Fort St. John, which was a
ridiculously long drive. Hundreds of
miles through the wilderness, and that was the closest we came to worrying
about running out of gas. At least it
wasn’t snowy though. Plus, I’ve really
gotten my fill of iced coffee in the last few days. I don’t know how much it costs…Canadian money
isn’t real, right? (That’s a very Becky-Bloomwood-way-of-thinking, isn’t it?)
(I’m kidding. Everyone knows that Canadian dollars are
real..even if they don’t use pennies and round change up up to the nearest
nickel instead.)
We
spent a lot of time doing math too:
converting kilometers to miles.
And don’t get me started on temperature.
I haven’t figured out an easy way to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit
yet.
All
you need to know is that it’s still kind cold, still all brown, and still SUPER
windy in Canada.
We
had grand plans of getting as far as we possibly could on Thursday. The less time spent driving through Canada,
the better. We made it through Dawson
Creek, the starting point of the Alaska Highway, and kept going through Grand
Prairie, Grand Cache, and then stopped at Jasper National Park for the
night.
Jasper
had several glaciers (including an ice field) and, apparently, you can get on this special bus that drives you UP the glacier. No, thanks.
The
town of Jasper was a wonderful little hippie paradise. So was the town of Banff. If you’re coming to Alberta (as so many of
you are, I’m sure, planning to), Jasper National Park would be the place to
go. There’s camping and hiking for you
hearty types, and then restaurants and hotels if you’re like me. If given a choice, we’d come back. It was agreed upon (by both of us), that this
national park is more impressive than anything we’d seen in the 49th
state.
We
saw a lot of elk and a lot of deer. I
said the deer couldn’t possibly be normal deer…they were too small. Scott said I must just be used to moose. Then I called a squirrel a chipmunk, and he
told me I must have “Alaska syndrome”. Probably.
On
Friday, we took off for the border, going as far as we could. We made it from Jasper to Great Falls, Montana. Victory in a sense: We made it to the lower 48.
Maybe 3 more days 'til we get where we need to be? Who cares...I'm just happy to be here.
