DAY 14 OF OUR ALASKAN ADVENTURES

We had a quick breakfast and started to “button up” the 5^th wheel for the next leg of our trip. We headed over to Chris and Randy’s to say good bye and thank them for their gracious hospitality and ended up sitting around and talking. When you get Randy and Bob together it is like two peas in a pod – non stop verbal ping pong. Chris and I could never get a word in edge wise! Before we knew it, it was 10am and our plans for leaving early had gone by the way side. We decided to hang around until the mail came to see if an express package would arrive for us, that we had expected yesterday. Chris, Randy and I took the “puppies” for a walk while Bob finished hooking up the 5^th wheel and getting it ready to roll. We were treated to lunch at Joey’s Fish and Chips in Quesnel – it’s just a little place, but the food was excellent and all you could eat on Tuesdays. Unfortunately, when we got back to the house, the mail had not arrived and we decided we needed to get on the road.

We said our good byes and headed out around 1230pm. We made a quick stop at the city RV Dump Station at PH 97 at the edge of town that Randy had shown Bob on one of their travels. It was a real convenient place to dump our black water tank and to fill our fresh water. It is set up in a circle so that you can easily maneuver your rig from one area to another. It also has a place to throw away trash – very user friendly for RVers. You exit back out onto PH 97. We were very impressed.

We were finally on the road around 1pm and it was a beautiful sunny day – a perfect ending to a wonder stay in Quesnel. PH 97 is also know as the Cariboo Highway in this section of BC and it passes through areas with lakes on the side of the road, pine forests and farms. The lakes in this area still had ice on them. We passed a huge sawmill (Dunkley Mill) and a pellet mill (Pinnacle Pellet).

PH 97 is a nice road, not heavily traveled and with wonderful scenery. We passed through Hixon on our way to Prince George. This is Cariboo’s most northern community. Extensive placer mining began here in the 1900’s and continues today. Prince George was the next community on PH 97. It is the 4^th largest city in B.C. with a population of around 80,000. It has the largest forest region in the province and has 3 pulp mills, saw mills, planners, dry kilns, mining, oil refining to name a few. Shortly after leaving Prince George, we started seeing road signs (moose crossing) and Bob even saw one laying down at the edge of a wooded area along the side of the road. At least he wasn’t trying to cross the road in front of me while I was driving!

The day was definitely moving along too quickly and before we knew it it was 5pm and we were going through Pine Pass (elevation 3,036ft). This is the highest pass on the John Hart Highway and the lowest pass breaching the Rocky Mountains in Canada. What a breath taking view of the Rockies! We managed to get a few good photos as we climbed the 6-10 percent grade up hill for 3-5 miles and then down. From this point we started seeing several signs for avalanche warnings. There were also these small red signs warning about bumps in the road. They give no advanced warning what they are but after the first one, YOU KNOW.

We were both getting tired and finally reached Chetwynd where we decided to stop for the night. We pulled into the only RV park that we found open at 630pm and breathed a sigh of relief to be done for the day. Low and behold, when we opened the slides, we found that the very bumpy road from Pine Pass had shifted a lot of the things in the 5^th wheel. The biggest thing was that the TV was partially out of the opening for it. The slide was the only thing that had kept it from falling totally out. Up until today we had not had any problems with things shifting – taught us a lesson about taking the bumpy roads a little slower.