Minor event on the way. While climbing a hill we started to smell brake drums overheating. After pulling over and doing a check Terry found the left rear wheel of George (our Geo Tracker tow vehicle) was very hot. I jerked the emergency brake off and on a few times and it must have dislodged something as we have had no problems since, thank goodness.
Prince George was humming with activity. The big rail yard and mills showed no sign of slowing down here.
Beyond PG we actually hit snow on the side of the road at Pine pass. After Pine pass we started to lose the mountain look of BC. We were into big rolling hills and the beginning of oil and gas country.
Chetwynd was the first major town. A very nice looking and busy place. The Main Street through town was lined with dozens of beautiful wood carvings of very thing from people to wild life to local scenery--quite something.
As we cou tines north we were constantly reminded of the serious fire situation in Fort McMurray on CBC radio. Also there were two bad fires where we were headed at mile 80 of the Alaska highway.
Yesterday the road was shut down and we were thinking we might have to divert our route to the Stewart highway and head north that way.
However we found that today they are piloting one lane traffic through the fire area so we took the chance of continuing north.
Our plan to stop at Charlie Lake would be cancelled as we determined we would try to make it past the fire area to pink mountain on the Alaska Highway.
Mile Zero at Dawson Creek revealed a smoky northern horizon but there was no turning back for us now.
At about mile 40 we were stopped with a group of cars and a dozen or so hydro rigs that we're getting ready to restore power to burned out areas. Evacuation included the motel beside us and to our dismay even the gas station!
After a half hour of watching the goings on and helicopter pilots pulling water from a local sewer pond, we were escorted through the smoke and smaller flaming spot fires. Both sides of the road were scorched black with smoking spots everywhere. We noticed a number of buildings burned to the ground as we maintained our spot in the long line of traffic that heading directly into the setting sun that was shrouded in clouds of dense smoke. It was quite a picture.
After 6 or 7 kilometres we made it through the fire and were on to Pink Mountain. Here we found a nice road siding and spent the evening along with 3 other RV'ers watching the late sun go down at 9:30 pm.
Daylight is definitely getting much longer as we head north.
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