Fort Nelson to Coal River

It was 50° and cloudy when we got up this morning. Our neighbors to the left of us left this morning at 7:00 - early risers. They had also stayed at the Mile 0 Campground in Dawson Creek.

 We didn’t take any photos of the campground yesterday, so I took a few this morning after breakfast. There is a a little grass at the campsite and the roads are all gravel and dirt.

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

We left Triple G Hideaway a little before 9:00 and headed north on the Alaska Highway. A few miles north of Fort Nelson we found a place where we could pull over to the side of the highway and park for a few minutes. Mike called the campground in Watson Lake to make a reservation for tomorrow night for 1 night.

We came across where the road was being repaired where the ground had slid out from under one side of the highway.

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

We stopped for lunch at 11:15 near Summit Lake.

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

This morning the only wildlife we saw was 1 deer, but after lunch we saw a lot of Stone Sheep including this mother and baby.

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

An hour later we saw these 2 moose at a pond near the highway.

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

We had been driving in a light rain since about 11:00 and after a couple of hours the weather started to clear up.

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

At 1:00 we arrived at Muncho Lake and the views were terrific. The water was so still and smooth, it looked as though the mountains continued down into the water. Muncho Lake is 7 miles long and 1 mile wide and is supposed to be 730 feet deep (400 feet is the deepest confirmed depth). It was so beautiful it was hard to stop taking photos.

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

Later on we saw more Stone Sheep and then came across this Bison herd next to the highway.

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

They had quite a few calves and they were all laying down in the grass.

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

We arrived here at Coal River Lodge & RV Park at 2:30. We were told to pick out a site and then register. There was only 1 other RV parked here and we pulled into site #7. Mike went to the office to pay for the site. It was $25 CAD ($26.50 US) since we paid in cash; the price would be $28 if we paid with a credit card. We have full hook-ups with 20 amp electric.

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

Mike checked the electric before plugging in to and it seemed OK. Our Progressive Industries Energy Management System kept blocking the electric and it turned out there was an open ground. Mike reported our problem to the office and they came right out and fixed it.

Coal River Lodge generates their own power with a diesel generator. We were close enough where we could hear the generator and smell the diesel, but we just closed the windows on that side of the RV and it wasn't too bad.

It was a good thing we stopped just outside of Fort Nelson to make our reservation for tomorrow night. Not too long after making our phone call we lost any cell phone service and don't have any here at Coal River.

Tinker made a friend today at Coal River - Rufus. Rufus lives at Coal River Lodge and is very friendly.

From Fort Nelson to Coal River

Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson

We were up at 7:00 this morning – I guess that has become our usual wake up time now.

We left Mile 0 Campground at 8:40 and headed north up the Alaska Highway.

From Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson

We stopped for gas at a Shell station at Fort St. John. We got 140.256 liters at $1.319 a liter ($185.00 CAD) which is a little over 37 gallons at $5.110 a gallon.

We stopped for lunch at a turnout at 11:30 about 114 miles north of Dawson Creek. About 20 minutes after lunch we ran into a rain storm and hail around Sikanni. We had rain off and on for the next 2 hours which made it hard to get some photos along the way.

From Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson

Mike took a photo of the RV's odometer showing we had a little over 50,000 miles on the RV.

From Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson

From Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson

We arrived in Fort Nelson at 3:10 and topped off the gas tank at a Fas Gas station. Gas was higher here than in Fort St. John. We got 129.462 liters at $1.429 a liter ($185.00 CAD) which is 34.2 gallons at $5.544 a gallon.

From Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson

We pulled into Triple G Hideaway about 3:40 and one of the staff led us to our campsite. We are in site #93 which is a pull-through. We have 30 amp electric, water, sewer and cable TV. There is wi-fi here at the campground, but the signal isn’t strong enough to reach our site. I won't be able to update our blog & photos while we're here.

After dinner tonight we looked up campgrounds in Woodall’s and Church's Alaska Camping book for Watson Lake and Whitehorse. Tomorrow Mike will call and make reservations for our stops there.

We didn’t take any photos of the campground tonight, so we’ll get some in the morning.

Domestic Chores & sightseeing in Dawson Creek

Today is Mike’s 69th birthday and we spent the morning here at the RV and then this afternoon went downtown to do a little sightseeing.

Right after breakfast Mike called the Triple G Hideaway campground in Fort Nelson to make a reservation for tomorrow night.

We had hoped to take Tinker to a local groomer here in Dawson Creek for a bath, but when I called "4" Paws Grooming at 8:00 all I got was an answer machine and I left a message. By 10:00 we still hadn’t heard back from the groomer, so I called again and got the answer machine. Either the groomer isn't open on Monday or they don't want the business.

So Mike got in the shower and gave Tinker a bath and then we blow dried him. He was white again and smelled much better. I think he even feels better.

From Dawson Creek

Mike is my hair colorist and next on our list for today was for him to apply hair color to cover up my gray roots. After we had both had a shower, I went over to the laundry to wash the rest of our clothes.

I forgot to mention that yesterday afternoon we had driven into town to find a car & RV wash. The car & RV wash was under new ownership and was being overhauled. he only thing working today was the car wash, so we washed the Vue. We also checked out the local laundromat and was it expensive! There were no single load washers & the double washers were $5. The larger washers were $7 & $10 a load and you got 3 minutes drying time for a quarter. So even though there are only 4 washers & 4 dryers (1 dryer out of order) at the campground, it was much cheaper to do laundry here.

I washed 4 loads of clothes this morning. The washers cost $2 and take $1 coins called "loonies". The dryers take quarters and you got 12 minutes for a quarter. The one dryer that wasn’t working was being repaired this afternoon, so it seems that the owner, Vern, gets things fixed as quickly as possible.

We drove to downtown Dawson Creek to take some photos and do a little sightseeing.

From Dawson Creek

Mike set up our tripod and took our photo at the Mile '0' Post in the center of downtown Dawson Creek.

From Dawson Creek

We found these murals commemorating the building of the Alaska Highway

From Dawson Creek

From Dawson Creek

and took photos of a few of the buildings downtown.

From Dawson Creek

From Dawson Creek

We stopped at the Safeway here to buy some groceries. Our last stop was at Tim Horton’s for a dozen donuts - we really like their donuts!

The weather was very pleasant today. We started out in long sleeves and then later this morning it warmed up enough for short sleeves. But by the time we came back from shopping, the temp had cooled down enough for us to switch back to long sleeves.

Quite a lot of the RVs left the campground this morning, but more came in this afternoon sometimes as many as 4 and 5 at a time and now the campground is almost full again.

We didn't take any photos of the RV park until this afternoon. The roads in the campground are dirt and gravel, but each site does have some grass.

From Dawson Creek