Day 13: Jasper to Fort St. John

In Which We Join the Alaska Highway at Mile 0
Alaska Highway at Mile 0 in Dawson Creek, BC

 We began our day in Jasper, AB and got a relatively early start to head out on the first day of our drive to Alaska.  Today's journey took us through Grand Cache, which had a great Visitor Center, little museum, and gift shop, Dawson Creek from which you pick up the Alaska Highway, and finally Fort St. John, which had an remarkably good Indian restaurant, and a very nice Holiday Inn Express, where we are staying (on points) for the night.

 The drive was mostly comprised of unremarkable roads and views, and long stretches of absolutely nothing.  Though there were a few fun stops and landmarks along the way.

 This video provides some of the highlights:

You'll notice several power plants and paper mills in the video, all of which screamed out to Bob as he recognized them as having B&W  boilers in them. For the B&W crew, here is a picture of the HM Milner Generating Station we drove by and of the Hinton Pulp paper mill which we also passed on our drive.
HM Milner Generating Station in Grande Cache, AB

The Hinton Pulp Paper Mill

The town of Grande Cache is very proud of their power plant and its coal-fired B&W boiler.  Bob was just tickled to see an exhibit on it at the Tourism Center museum.  He was even wearing a B&W polo.

Exhibit at Grande Cache Visitor Center Museum

I also liked this stop, but for a very different reason.  I picked up these cool earrings for 30% off!

Lisa's New Earring

Further down the road, we found out that Canadians take protecting their wildlife very seriously. You probably saw this fly by in the video, but I think it warrants a still all its own. Here is a Caribou Crossing road sign:

Caribou Crossing

When we hit Dawson Creek we found the traffic circle with the Alaska Highway (aka "Alcan Highway") mile marker 0, shown in the main post picture. However, we somehow managed to miss the giant visitor center, even bigger Dawson City/Alaska Highway arch, and art gallery in an old grain silo.  We're still not sure how, and imagine that must have taken a remarkable amount of skill as those tourist traps are designed to be unavoidable.  But we managed it, and after snapping a quick pic at the traffic circle we headed on down the road.

We gained an hour when we crossed into BC, so we arrived at our Holiday Inn Express at about 5:30. After doing some laundry we headed out to a great Indian dinner at a local restaurant. (Thank You Trip Advisor.)  Just like Korean in Jasper, we couldn't believe great authentic Indian in Fort St. John, BC.  

We're ready to hit the road again tomorrow morning and head further on up the road to Fort Nelson, BC. This one is only about a 4 hour drive, so hopefully we'll find some fun stops along the way.

Until then....

--Lisa

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