Fantasy Days 11 (Free day) and 12 (Travel from Hinton to Dawson's Creek)

On Tuesday, Fantasy had a free day scheduled. Many folks took a sky tram to a high point in Jasper, others went to Athabasca Falls (which Carl and I had seen on Monday), others went hiking or did laundry... we did laundry, and accomplished a few things around the rig, including resting!

In the evening, we had a travel meeting to go over the driving plans for Wednesday - driving to Dawson's Creek, British Columbia.

Our tail gunners have a laminated map on which they have tagged all our stops -- yellow for US stops, green for Canadian stops. The red arrow is pointing to Dawson's Creek. The red circle is around the stops we have already made. We feel like we've come a long ways, but we still have a long way further to go!

Gracie in her spot at the Hinton - Jasper KOA Holiday campground.

On Wednesday, we continued north on Alberta Route 40 from Hinton.

There were a lot of evergreen (I think pine) trees -- in many places there were signs that indicated when the area had last been harvested. Some of the signs additionally indicated when the area was reseeded, and/or when it was next planned to be harvested. You may notice that the trees are not growing right up along the roadway. That's so we could see wildlife before we might run into it!

We were in an area designated as Caribou Corridor -- this was the only caribou we saw. I did see a deer-like creature at one point -- quite large and without antlers (so it could not be a caribou) -- probably a deer.

More of the pine forests...

... and still more with a lake by the road and a mountain in the distance.

The drive was not quite as scenic as the Icefields Parkway, but the roads were in pretty good shape (only a couple of spots where there was construction).

We stopped in Grande Prairie to get fuel...

... Carl needed to figure out how to start the pump with the cardlock control panel. We used our TSD/EFS card...

... and he was successful getting fuel! The pump only told us how many liters he had pumped - not how much it cost nor how much per gallon we were paying. In a little while, the Open Roads app on my phone gave me the information about how much fuel we gotten and how much it cost us.

After Grande Prairie, we were in cropland...

... heading west on Route 43.

We stopped in the small town of Beaverlodge, to get a picture at the giant beaver statue!

Information about the giant beaver

Others of our group stopped too

We stayed at the parking area near the giant beaver for a little while, making and eating lunch while there.

A few miles further and we re-entered British Columbia.

Welcome sign at the town of Pouce Coupe

Continuing on toward Dawson's Creek.

So... what relationship does the town of Dawson's Creek have with the TV program of the same name?

Answer: no relationship at all!

Carl reminded me that I needed to update our "Visited North America" map that displays on the right frame of the blog if you view it on the web page (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/) -- you won't see it if you are subscribed for updates in email -- I've made the update to indicate we've visited British Columbia and Alberta. We are planning to add Yukon Territory and Alaska while on this trip. We're still missing Colorado and Kentucky of the lower 48 (and, Hawaii). Still more for us to explore!