Dawson Creek, BC

Monday, May 30, 2017

We made good use of the friendly visitor centre again on Monday. We were able to pick up a lot of good literature that will keep us busy over the next weeks. After taking some pictures of the Alaska Highway sign, we headed across the street to the historic Milepost 0 sign and then into the Alaska Highway House for an hour long PBS documentary of the building of the Alaska Highway. This year marks the 75th anniversary since the highways was opened. It took the army only 8 months to build the highway – when you see the kind of conditions they experienced and the terrain they had to cut through, it was quite the accomplishment considering many of the men had no engineering or machinery background. We’ll be travelling on quite a different highway than the one they opened in 1942 – and even very different than the one travelled by Joyce’s parents in 1997.

Another gorgeous sunset tonight – we missed seeing the northern lights on Saturday night! We don’t know if they were out here, but they certainly were in many parts of BC just after midnight. It’s hard to get used to it staying light so late – sunsets are close to 10 pm and will only get later as we travel north.

We decided to stay an extra night in Dawson Creek so we could take an extra side trip to the W.A.C. Bennett Dam. It was about 350 km circle route that we took on Tuesday. We had another warm day with lots of sun for our drive. The roads were good and we arrived at the Dam in the afternoon in time for the 2:30 tour. We had the tour guide to ourselves – it is definitely still slow for tourists here. The dam, along with one on the Peace River just south of it supplies 1/3 of all the electrical needs of BC. The dam also is celebrating a special birthday – 50 years since it was completed. It was also interesting to hear them talk about the detrimental effects building the dam had on the indigenous people of the area. Now, 50 years after the dam was built they are trying to acknowledge how building the dam, flooding the land for the reservoir impacted those who relied on the land for their lives. The indigenous people lost valuable hunting and fishing grounds as well as many of their homes and communities. There was a 15 minute film highlighting this and the tour guide started the tour with an acknowledgement that the dam was actually on treaty land.

We spent Wednesday at the trailer getting things ready for our trip north in the morning. Next, the Alaska Highway trip begins….