5-31-96
Got a later start than I wanted but about 10:20 I was finally on the road. I made my usual stop in Willows for gas. I am getting about 9 MPG without overdrive and on level road with no head wind. I put the cruise control on 55 and let it stay there for most of the trip. After I gassed up in Willows I upped the speed to about 65. The truck moved along like before. I knew there was a trailer behind me but it didn't seem to affect the truck. When I got to the mountains it didn't even slow down. I could have gone up at 65 or perhaps even 70.0..
I went by a State Park with some bluffs that reminded me of the story of Pern and I could see in my minds eye the dragons landing. Shasta was as picturesque as always. It and Rainier are two of the most picturesque mountains I have ever seen in the US.
Glorious day, Shasta Lake was full. It is so nice to see that after the years of drought. I continued up through Mt. and Lake Shasta then to the high mountain meadows. Then through Weed and Yreka and up toward OR. Finally reached the top and started down into Ashland, home of the out door Shakespearean Theater..
I gassed up in Ashland, 25 gal and a bit for a little over 200 miles through the mountains. Not bad but I can already see that this trip is going to cost more than I anticipated for gas. I arrived about 7:00 PM. I am staying in the same place, near Roseberg, G and I stayed last year. I seems to make me feel closer to her. Straightened the place up, wow, what a job, went for a walk while dinner cooked, and here it is 9:30. Time to eat and crash. I want to get an early start tomorrow so I can be in Puyallup at a decent hour.

6-1-96
Well, here it is day two already. I woke at about 6:00, showered ate and it is now a little after 7:00. If I get to moving I can probably be out of here 7:30, so I had better get to it.
The weather was beautiful and the traffic was light through OR and WA. I drove until about noon then stopped at a Burger King and and had a Whopper. By 1:15 I was getting tired so I found a rest stop and pulled over and slept for about a half hour.
I reached Puyallup about 3:00 called Aaron and he sent Pat down after me. By 3:45 I was parked and inside the house. That evening we went to Cathy's, Pat's daughter, house for a bar-b-que. What a delightful and loving family she has. Cathy took care of Sophie, Aaron's mother, for a number of years. They have a new house now, that they built themselves, with a fantastic view. They also put in a small pond with a waterfall. I am glad I stopped. Aaron doesn't look well. He has osteoporosis and is very bent. The fall with the compression fracture of L1 didn't help much and it is obvious he is in a lot of pain. We talked about family, Pat gave me a few pictures. They also have a brief history of Bernard and Eva and their family. She just has the original but said she will make a copy for me. The recollections are not all that I was told but the differences are minor. It has given me a better picture of my father growing up. It is after 11 and I want to get up early so I had better end this.

6-2-96
Didn't sleep well last night, I woke up a about 1:00 and read until after 2:00 then finally slept fitfully until about 6:30. Pat fixed a huge breakfast. I gave them a bottle of wine as a thank you for Cathy, Pat didn't want one, and I was on my way by 8:30. After a half hour nap I crossed the border into Canada about noon. I really wanted to get a little bit farther today but with the lack of sleep last night, and the beautiful scenery here in Frasier Valley I just decided to stop early. So here it is, about 3:15 and I am set up chucked in and relaxed at the Canyon Alpine RV Park about two miles north of Boston Bar, on Hwy. 1. .
The owner of the campground just came by with some fresh eggs. I guess her chickens produce more than she can use, so she passes them out to the residents. What a nice gesture.

6-3-96
I slept OK last night but there was either some thunder or some explosions during the night and again this morning. There was no rain and the sky wasn't very cloudy so I think maybe they were explosions, but why during the middle of the night. Oh well, time to get breakfast and than hit the road..
I talked to the owner of the camp ground and he said that it was thunder and rain during the night but this morning it was an explosion. They are taking down part of a mountain, they need the granite.
The rest of the trip today was just as pretty as I remembered it. I am getting so relaxed that I had to push myself to do 300 miles today. I stopped about noon at a rest stop to get out and stretch and have some lunch and realized it was the same place I stopped the last time I was here. I think those pictures were in the camera that I lost. I didn't take any pictures today as it was a bit overcast and no film would have done justice to the view. After I left the rest stop I chased clouds dragging their fingers of rain across the mountains and valleys like some gray airborne jellyfish. I finally caught them and got rained on. Gassed up and stopped in Quesnel.(Que-nel) The camp ground is advertised as rustic and it is. It is about 100 yards from a nice little lake so for a short walk I can sit on a bench and look out over the water. The rest rooms are very clean and they don't charge extra for a shower. The people who run the place are very nice. I found out, after visiting their little store, they can't sell beer but they gave me one. I offered to pay but she wouldn't take any money. This has really been a wonderful trip.

6-4-96
Woke up a bit before 6:00 this AM. Had a good nights sleep so I got right up, took a shower, had breakfast, emptied the tanks and was on my way by about 8:30. It rained most of the day and most of the way. Not a real steady downpour, just drizzle, then hard rain, then nothing had planned to get gas after going through Prince George. Almost ran out of gas. I drove by the place where I had planned to get it, I didn't really see it, and by the time I realized what I had done I was closer to the next station, so I went on. That station was closed, as was the next. They were doing a lot of construction on the road and apparently one of them lost their tanks or something and the other was just closed. There was only about 20 miles between stations but when I missed the first one it meant about 80 miles before I finally found one open. The warning light had just come on when I pulled in. So I gassed up and was on my way again. I saw a few deer today and an eagle. I also took a picture of some bird by the water fall. I don't know what kind it was. I also realized yesterday that I forgot my binoculars. The scenery here is just spectacular. Huge canyons with rivers running through them, snow covered mountains, shear cliffs. It almost makes me feel like I have gone back in time. There was nothing but forests and mountains for as far as I could see. At one point I came out between layers of clouds. From a view point all I could see of the valley was fog like a big bowl of gray chowder. In front of me I could see snow covered mountains that disappeared into the overhead mist. I wanted to take a picture of the mountains today but the weather was so bad that I couldn't.
I was through Dawson Creek on my motorcycle the last time I was her so I took "Hudson's Hope Loop (BC Hwy 29)" to the Alaska Highway.
It was a long trip down a dirt road to the campground and couple of times I wasn't sure I was going the right direction. I pulled into the campground at about 3:30, registered went back to the truck and realized I locked the keys in the truck. The owners got a coat hanger for me and I was finally able to unlock the door. It was a bit of a scare though. In the meantime the owners had called a garage but they were out so they just left a message on their machine. I am the only one here in the campground. I have a choice of electricity or water. The outlets are to far away from each other to use both. Oh well. .

They have had so much rain this year, and more to come, that they are having trouble planting. The growing season is so much shorter in days here than it is down south, but the days are so much longer things grow faster. I wonder if the sunlight time is about the same. When he asked me what I did before I retired and I told him he said " Oh your one of those ed-ge-cated people eh?" It was interesting. Here was this man who looked to be in his seventies, who supported and raised a family on a farm and was now turning part of it into a campground and he said I was educated. I don't think he realized how educated he was. People are so interesting

6-5-96
Wow, what a nights sleep. I think I turned the light off at about 8:30. I woke up at 1:30 read until 3:00 then back to sleep until 6:00 then dozed until 7:00. I put foil on the windows, but I need some tape to put it on the vent. When I woke up at 1:30 I thought it was around 5:00 AM, it was almost light enough to read by. I think if I go through a town today I will stop and have a key made. I should probably have another one made for the trailer also. I don't know why I was so tired yesterday. I didn't feel sleepy until about 7:00 but I didn't want to go to bed that early. Well it is almost 8:30 and about time to hit the road.
Well today was probably the most interesting day so far. I pulled out at about 8:45 and picked up the Alaska Highway about an hour later. I thought, silly me, that gas would be less expensive because of all the traffic. It is about .10 a lt. more than in Southern BC. Here in Ft. Nelson I just paid .65 a lt.. I had paid as little as .49 previously, but most places it was in the mid to high 50's. That's a liter. So when all is said and done it is about $2.00 a gal..
I saw a few Caribou today. When I first saw them out in the distance I thought they were horses as they were brown and white. When I got closer I could see that they were not horses. They still had velvet on their horns. I think there was a doe and a couple fawns but I am not sure. I only got a picture of the doe. I almost got a great picture but a car came by and scared her off. Caribou are called reindeer in Europe. Here they are called reindeer only if they are domesticated..
I stopped early today (about 2:30) here in Fort Nelson. I am staying at the West end Campground. They offer a free wash for the trailer so I took advantage of it. Tomorrow will probably be a longer day, especially if I go on to Watson Lake.
It's kind of interesting that when I was here before the trip from Watson Lake to Fort Nelson was such a short trip, comparatively. There is a caravan here in the campground going to Alaska. I asked the Wagon master about the condition of the "Top of the World Highway" between Dawson and Alaska, because of all the rain, and he said it depended on whether I like mud or dust. The best time is the day after it rains, and according to the weather report it is supposed to rain off and on the rest of the week. I don't want to be there in the rain but if it looks like it will clear up I will probably go for it on the way up. Otherwise I will wait for the return trip. I didn't take a nap again today. Wow, two days in a row. Maybe if I can get a good nights sleep tonight I won't have to take one tomorrow either. I can't believe how dirty the truck and trailer got. I must have hosed 10 pounds of dust and dirt off them today and they are still not real clean.
While wandering through the CG I met a couple of families from Auburn, which is just about 30 miles from where I live. Small world.
I tried to load windows 95 and then realized I didn't have the book, and I need that for the serial number.
It is almost 5:00, I will try and call about 6:30. I should remember to try and set a time so we can talk.
I just talked to Georgia. It was nice to talk to her again.

6-6-96
I slept well last night. I was sleeping before 11:30 and I didn't wake until about 6:00 this AM. I had cold cereal for breakfast and I put some of those dried strawberries Nancy gave me on it. That was real tasty. Thank you Nancy.
It started raining during the night and has continued throughout the day. For about 10 miles today I was in very serious fog. Fortunately the road was also very bad so everyone was driving very slow. I saw lots of wildlife today. Many caribou, some black bears, wild(?) horses, (I wonder if they are offspring of the animals used when the original highway was built) and possibly a brown bear. If it was (a brown) I just caught a glimpse (bear butt) as it hurried into the woods. When the weather cleared, from a mountain viewpoint I could look out and see for miles. There were nothing but forests. There were more shades of green than I could count. And then, it was like God had finger-painted a river twisting and turning from one corner to the other. While I was in the valley, there was on my left was about 200 yard of trees and than sheer granite cliffs going straight up for almost a thousand feet. The sunlight sparkled off the edges and planes in over one hundred shades of grays and browns. In some of the crevices there was still ice that may have been there since the ice ages. On my right there was a muddy brown river boiling and bubbling over rocks. The land gradually slopped up and then more huge granite faces with trees and grasses sticking out, like stubble.
Muncho Lake is beautiful. It's deep green and blue waters are the result of Copper Oxide leaching into the lake. I took some pictures, but with the weather so poor I am not sure they will do justice to its beauty.
There was some more road construction with about 15 miles of mud and slush. Some guy in a motorhome must have been in a real hurry because he flew by me like I was standing still. He must have had a guardian angel with him because I didn't see him on the side of the road. He threw up a lot of mud when he went by and I had to stop and clean my window.
I had wanted to stop Laird Hot Springs but it was raining so hard I didn't. I will probably regret it later.
When I finally arrive in Watson Lake I pulled into the line I thought was for the campground. After about 15 minutes of waiting I asked a guy going by in a cart and he said it was the line for the wash facilities. As badly as I (the truck and trailer) needed it, I really didn't want to stand in the rain and wash my vehicle, so I went to the store and checked into the campground. After plugging in I found there was an electrical problem with the GFI. I don't know whether the problem is in the socket or what but I just wired around it and will fix it when I get to Fairbanks. The VCR also broke. It looked like someone had stepped on it. I wonder if I had an unauthorized rider. I bought some beer yesterday in Ft. Nelson, tonight I think I will have some. Here it is 7:30 and I already have the yawns. I think tonight will be another one of those early nights.

6-7-96
I can't believe I am doing this. My lights were out, and so was I, by 8:30 last night. I slept until 5:30 and only woke then because it was cold and I hadn't turned the heater on. At 6:00 I finally got up turned the heater on and went back to bed and read until 7:30. It is now almost 8:10 and I am still not dressed, but showered and shaved and ready for breakfast. Hopefully I will get out of here by 9:00. There is a place in Teslin called "Mukluk Annie's" that I have read about and would like to stop there for lunch. I guess I had better get to moving....
Well I made it to Mukluk Annie's. I had an all I could eat salmon dinner for about $11.00 and the camping is free. Tonight, because I had the Salmon dinner I get a free ride on a houseboat. This is probably one of the most beautiful places I have ever camped. I am almost in the lake. I am about 20 yards above it right near the edge. In the distance are the Dawson Peaks and some other mountains. I just saw a white bird out on the water. I don't know what it was and couldn't get a good look at it as I forgot my binoculars.
Today's drive was very pretty. I saw the sky for the first time in a couple days. There were some clouds and a rainbow. At first I wasn't sure if it was the sky or just higher overcast. When I came over the top of a hill I could see mountains out in the distance and forests for a far as I could see. Running right through the middle of this dark green landscape was a small scar called a highway. From the distance it looked like the trees came right up to the edge of the road. Way out in the middle of the forest, where it looks like man has never walked stands a microwave tower. It is red and white with the large gray receivers on it. At first it seems out of place, and perhaps it is, but it catches your eye and lets you know there is civilization near.
The mountains in the distance are just incredible. The land is various shades of dark green, like a carpet, and than right in the middle of it is these white mountains. Almost like an ice cream. In face on of the mountains looks like someone took an ice cream scoop and scooped part of it away..
Riding along side the Smith River. It is very wide, perhaps 300 to 400 yards across much bigger than the Sacramento River. It appears the far side of the river is still frozen. There is a little ice in the middle and the near side is thawed. I drove by a place called George's gorge. It caused me to think of Georgia, as if I needed a reason. The I thought of a play on words. remember gorgeous George, the wrestler. I just thought it was kind of funny. The battery is almost dead on the laptop. I don't know why. I thought it was all charged up yesterday. Oh well, I had better quit for now, I feel a nap coming on.

6-8-96
The houseboat ride, last night, was wonderful. It was a bit chilly, and I forgot my down coat and didn't bring a sweater so I wore two light jackets. It is probably a mile from one side of the river to the a little island and than about 500 yards from the island to the other side. We went around the island. Overall the trip took just a bit over two hours.
I met some interesting people on the boat. I spent some time talking with a couple who have been full timing for about four years. They put their rig in storage in Washington and bought a slide in camper for this trip. They drove up and are taking the ferry back. The ferry alone will set them back about 2 grand. They are still enjoying themselves and don't plan to settle down soon. The lady said they still want to see the east coast and Florida. The spent last winter traveling from San Diego to Palm Springs. They would stay about four to six weeks and then drive a hundred miles and do it again.
I also met a young couple that were tent camping. They had a baby (5 months old) and I offered to let the lady and her baby stay in the trailer while her husband set up. She declined but both of the did come over later and we visited until after midnight. It was still light outside. They are most recently from Colorado and are moving to Anchorage. He is a singer and musician and feels he won't have a problem getting a job there. I didn't hear any of his tapes but he seems very confident. He was a bit of a (political) conspiracy theorist, but other than that they were both quite pleasant.
I had breakfast with them this morning. All you can eat for about 7.15 Canadian. I finally got out of the restaurant and on the road at about 9:30. I forgot to check the gas gauge and passed the next station. I had gone 230 miles when I finally gassed up. It took right at 30 gal so I didn't have a lot left. The tank holds 35 gal.
I started getting a sore throat and I don't feel well and I don't know why. I wonder if I am allergic to something in the truck. My sinuses really seem to get backed up when I am driving. Or perhaps I just notice it more because there is nothing else to do. I think this is the longest I have ever been alone. I have taken trips before even by myself but never this long at a time. It is interesting. I have all this time to think and my mind is usually a blank. Oh well..