Dawson Creek – British Columbia

We’ve been on the road seventeen days with 2600 miles on the odometer when we arrived at Dawson Creek yesterday (Friday; it’s scotch night). Dawson Creek is an important stop on our trip.

  • It’s our first stop in British Columbia.
  • The weather is warmer than we’ve had the last few days.
  • This completes the first section of Fred’s itinerary.

The most important reason though, is that Dawson Creek is where we pick up the famous Alaska Highway. As Fred said this afternoon, “We’ve come all this way just to get to the start.”  If you want to drive to Alaska, this is the road that will get you there. Fairbanks is at the other end of this road, only 1500 miles away.

Gang under ALCAN Highway sign,
Fred, Sally, Deb, Anne and Jim take a moment to pose for photos under the highway banner.

The Army Corps of Engineers built the road in 1942 in eight months for military purposes during the second world war. The public didn’t have access to the road until 1948 and it wasn’t paved until the Alaska pipeline was built. Now the road’s covered with RVs. There’s a thriving cottage industry shepherding caravans of RVs on the same route that we’re taking.

Class A motoromes from a guided caravan.
A small part of a RV Caravan sharing the same campsite with us. Our paths cross often as we move from park to park.

A couple of days ago, I was afraid that we wouldn’t get into Dawson Creek. Last week they had torrential rains that dumped over four inches of rain in the area. The creek that runs through the middle of town (surprise, it’s also called Dawson Creek) cut the town in half by washing out the main road. Within three days, crews patched the roads enough to get traffic flowing again.

Damage on the Dawson Creek Broidge.
Only a couple of days before we arrived in Dawson Creek, over four inches of rain caused flooding on Dawson Creek and closed the major road through town.

We’ve now cleared the Canadian Rockies and the countryside is flatter, with farms and lots of timber. The towns are further apart, but they have all the franchises you’d expect at home. We even passed a Costco yesterday in Grand Prairie, which is something that we rarely do.

The geography of our route has changed from mountains to prairie as we pick up the ALCAN Highway.
The geography of our route has changed from mountains to prairie as we pick up the ALCAN Highway.

Tomorrow morning we strike out for Fort Nelson. A leg that’s close to three hundred miles or 450km. Although the road is famous, it gets bad reviews for its condition. We’ll batten down the hatches and suffer through it, because now we’ve made a turn and are on our way to Alaska.

jw

2 thoughts on “Dawson Creek – British Columbia”

  1. Way excited for you all!! LIving vicariously through your postings! I always wanted to ride the motorcycle to Alaska but Don would never agree to it. Probably because he’s smarter than me!

    Please tell Sally (since I don’t know if she is seeing emails) “thanks for the birthday card”. I was so surprised to get a card in the mail, sent from a place way far from Congress! Happy to have friends like you guys, even though we don’t know Fred and Deb.

    1. So glad You got the card (rude tho it may be) It’s great Jim has the blog so we can all stay in touch over the summer. Love you, Sally
      scm

Comments are closed.

Discover more from On the road with Jim

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading