Day 25 - Charlie Lake, Fort St. John, BC to Muncho Lake, BC

Rain, Fog, Mountains and Views

We got off early for what turned out to be another long day on the Alaska Highway in British Columbia. It was spitting rain when we left and got rainier as we went along until late in the day when we had a bit of blue sky, then more rain a dinner time.

The road out of Fort St. John was much like the road in, a bit of rolling through fields and woods with trucks, but the density of trucking was decreasing. As we left the town we passed an electronic highway sign extolling the 75th anniversary of the Alaska Highway. Ellen's photo has us passing by with a tanker truck ahead...75 years of tank trucks?

It was still pretty wet when we made our first fuel stop at Pink Mountain, where we saw no pink and no mountain, but a fair bit of mud. As we were fueling on one side of the pumps, two sprinters pulled into the other side. They were from Littleton, MA and were already returning from Alaska. They'd driven up, spent three days at Denali and are driving back. To each his own...

About lunchtime we made it to Fort Nelson, the "official" end of the gas and oil patch in BC and the home of North America's largest natural gas processing plant. We stopped at the visitor centre which is in the local brand-new recreation centre, a large facility that has what looked like an Olympic-sized indoor pool. Oil and gas has been good to Fort Nelson. After lunching in the vans, stopping in the visitor center for a large load of maps and information on the Yukon, we walked a damp block to the Gourmet Girl for good coffee before continuing down the road.

The road now got interesting. We were climbing back into the Rockies. Now that we were out of oil and gas territory, the road became narrower and rougher. Not so many big trucks, so it was now chipseal rather than smooth asphalt. Not that there were no trucks, at one point we crested a pass and passed by a pair of double trailer tank trucks that were stopping for a mandatory brake check only to have them come screaming by us on the way down. About 200 feet of tankers passing at about 70mph on a 7% downhill grade on a narrow mountain road is a bit disconcerting. We caught up with them several times going through the mountains as they ground up the hills, but we never passed by them again, even when we had the chance.

As we climbed into the first pass, we climbed into the clouds and the road was wet and very foggy and twisty. There were times when we really couldn't see the next turn until we were nearly on it. Once we crested the pass, we got onto the other side of the rain and it became a rather fun drive even though landscape that became increasingly rocky and interesting.

Our second stop of the day was at the Toad River Lodge, where we just took a break and perused their small store and gawked at the hat collection that covered the ceilings.

From there we continued to Muncho Lake and are staying at a small provincial park campground right on the lake. It was pretty nice when we arrived, but the chilly air and rain arrived by dinner time.

Another 397 miles today—tomorrow the Yukon.