Day 5

Day 5 Thursday April 24, 2008

Dawson Creek 7:29 AM Tim Horton breakfast good. 21 o
START ALASKA HIWAY 8:19 AM 2874.2 km 21 o

8:49 first occurrence of old snow plowed chunks of snow unmelted on hiway

>
8:53 start downhill grade to Peace River;
road snow covered except for tire track speed limit 70 kph

Charlie Lake 9:32 $1.289/liter Apply strong Canadian accent and say
"they don't know what to do with snow..... down SOUTH there in Edmonton" 18 o


9:48 first sunshine 10 AM kilometre 75 16 o
10:06 first log truck

10:41 14 o 11:15 kilometre 240 12 o Extreme grade 50 kph speed limit,

We've been driving in front of this semi.

Let's pull off and let him go down the hill first. Then we saw the "Explosives" sign on its side.

Bucking Horse 11:45 lunch Ukranian cabbage soup => water, cabbage, water, pale orange mystery vegetable (NOT carrot possibly parsnip?) and more water. Trucker in the resturant was telling stories of loosing breaks on a steep downhill with a 60,000 lb load. Another trucker told us we would run out of snow 20 minutes north, and we did, but still no moose.

12:57 snow is gone Road crews are mowing small willow bushes in Right of Way (ROW). Note to Kevin Kaltenbach: first rough road (road construction) at Bougie Creek.
1:28 Continuing car discussion of Right Of Way maintenance.

Lots of workers: mowers, gas brush saws, chainsaws ROW is 60 yards wide and manicured! Must be a 1520 mile long fire break! BK start mowing now. 25 o

Ft. Nelson 2:05 $1.32.9/liter

Muskwa River is first completely ice covered river north of town

MOUNTAINS some gravel road by bridge construction

Muncho Lake. They were landing planes on the ice, so it must have been pretty thick. Stayed in a lodge on the lake. Breakfast cost twice what we were used to paying. Charged $8.00 just to sit down and look at the breakfast menu. Beautiful area but again no moose. We did see 4 Stone Sheep about an hour before getting here. (Stone Sheep are different from Dall Shep in that they don't carry Bratz dolls with them, and they live in an area south of the Dall sheep, but north of Mountain Sheep.) Petrol 1.479/liter ==> $5.599/gallon and if you consider the Canada/US exchange rate, it costs even more $$$$$.