Beautiful British Columbia,,,,

Another dismal morning.  Clouds and a light mist greeted us from our "No frills" room.  It was not too bad and we both slept well.  We had good coffee (I brought a little Keurig and some ground Tim Horton's coffee to enjoy) and we each had something for breakfast from the "car food box".

We loaded up the car, which is now turning to a two toned white over dirty beige color from the rainy, muddy road grime.  I walked the dogs who were looking at me with the look on their little faces saying.... "No Mom, not another ride in the car!!!"...  I did not have the heart to tell them that we have 4 more days AFTER the ride today.  But it is surely a shorter time than  it was back on September 6th.

Today we headed north,  Up to now it has been mainly west on the Trans-Canadian Highway,  But from Grand Prairie, we headed north and almost immediately came into much more mountainous roads.  We had opted not to fill up our extra gas can today as there seemed to be enough probable gas stops on our route.  We willed up outside of Grand Prairie and headed on our northern journey.

The leaves get more colorful with each day.  Today there were plenty of yellows.  But there were also more oranges now and we are seeing a smattering of red and maroon.  The roads go up, up, up and then like a really tall roller coaster, dooowwwn.  The roads seem to go straight and the engineers did nothing more than follow a straight line over the hills and valleys.

I did the majority of the driving as I felt good and Rob was comfortable as a passenger.  The only issue was when I thought we were going into a truck passing zone, only to find that it was actually a right turn lane.  So breaking hard, we managed the turn and caught our breath before turning around and getting back on the road.  Oops....  We were both a tad more watchful of the road after that.

Now, I always begin looking for gas when my gauge gets to the second mark.  I think it is about 2/3rds used at that mark.  But during this trip, I have also let it get to the little gas pump mark before filling up.  But as the miles stretched on and the few little gas stations that were on our route were closed for the season, I begab to appreciate having an extra 5 gallons (good for about 100 extra miles) in the car.

We finally came upon a strange station out in the middle of nowhere.  It seemed to be two storage containers that had one hose on each container.  One was tank 1 and was diesel fuel.  The other was tank 2 with the "booth' at one end.  You went into the booth, swiped your credit card and indicated which tank you wanted.  Then you went out to the vehicle, put the pump handle into your tank and pushed a start button to get your gas.  I have no idea how much it cost and only the numbers on the tank to indicate how much was pumped... in liters.  It will be interesting to see how much I was charged.  But I did not care as we once again had a full tank.  Tomorrow we fill the gas can as tomorrow the stations will be even fewer and far between.

We officially got on Route 97 which is officially known as the Great Alaskan Highway.  Rob tried to get a picture of the official sign in Dawson Creek, BC.  I will try ot snag it from him to share with you.

The Northern Rockies are beautiful and some of the taller mountains already have snow on the peaks.  Look hard and you might see it.

We also saw a local, wandering along the road.  Rob slowed down.... he was driving by this time... so I could shoot the picture.

Beautiful, isn't she... or he... as long a it stayed right where it was.

Tonight we are in Forth Nelson, BC.  Tomorrow we head for Watson Lake, in the Yukon Territory.  Counting down... four more days until we arrive at my new home.  Keep those prayers coming, we really had that hedge around us today.