Thursday, July 18, 2013

Dawson Creek (Not the tv show)

So I now know that the tv show was Dawson's Creek and Dawson was a person. Oh well... Anyway, we set out from Edmonton early this morning and missed the last turn to go to Timmie's! Angst and caffeine withdrawal ensued. We were then on the highway and made a side trip about 35 km later to find another Tim's. All was well in the world.
It was about a 5 hour drive through increasingly hilly terrain. There continued to be massive fields of canola that looked like seas of yellow.

In this shot of a canola field, you can also see the interesting poles that we saw all day. The upper arms were slanted away from the main pole. We thought maybe it was to let ice and snow slide off more easily. Any other ideas?

This one shows the field plus some feathery purple plants that were in the ditch in front of the field.
After about 4 hours, we reached Grande Prairie which was a much larger city than we'd expected. There was a lot of industry and massive amounts of building. We made a pit stop at a Real Canadian Superstore and found that there was also a Real Canadian Liquor Store. Very civilized!


And here is the PC Malbec Marilyn decided to try. We're drinking it now and it's surprisingly good. Too bad we can't get it at home.


We're finding that highway construction is pretty much endless. You just finish one multi kilometre long slow down when you see the sign for the next one. We had one stretch of 26 km today where they were resurfacing the road by putting down a layer of hot tar followed by a layer of stones. Haven't seen that since I was a kid but I guess it works up here.



The highlight of the day, for me at least, was the town of Beaverlodge. When we were about 5 km away, I turned to Marilyn and said, "You know, if there's a giant beaver in that town, I need to stop for pictures." She just said, "I know." She was thinking the same thing. That's love for you! When we pulled up, there were two other vehicles there, both from Ontario. I just knew that somewhere in the north, there would be a giant beaver attraction.


Dawson Creek is a fairly special place because it is Mile Zero of the Alaska Highway. The highway was built by the US army in 1942 so that they could transport troops and equipment to Alaska in case of an invasion or attack. There are a number of markers and a museum about the highway.




The town is apparently known for its murals and we saw quite a few. 





 The town is not that big and it was pretty empty in the late afternoon. Not sure where everyone was.



If you don't have a truck, you can't live in Dawson Creek!


Marilyn found a quilt store and bought some material for her collection.

I would be willing to move to Dawson Creek if I could have one of these!

We lost another hour today when we crossed into BC so were quite hungry by 7:00. We don't tend to eat lunch while driving and just graze on trail mix. There were quite a few options for dinner but none was as close as Mr. Mike's, the steak place right across from our hotel. It had good reviews on Trip Advisor so we walked over and tried it out. It turned out well, and we enjoyed our dinner.
They had some Granville Island beer from Vancouver on tap, never a bad thing!

I tried the beer braised ribs. Still like mine better, but these were really tasty and tender. 


And Marilyn had chicken and red pepper quesadillas with a salad. Also, really good. 


Tomorrow, we're off to Fort Nelson. No idea what's there at this point. Will do some reading tonight!

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