Chetwynd

5 June

There was a warning sign along the road that showed a moose. Alan wanted a picture of the sign so I snapped one as we were stopped as we were coming back to the RV park yesterday. This this morning as we were climbing up into the foothills north of Prince George on our way to Chetwynd, we saw lots of skid marks in the road and what looked like a large piece of brown shag carpet piled alongside the road. It was a very dead moose. And no, there's no photo of the dead moose. You just have to imagine. We pulled into a turnout shortly after that and there was a big rig with a severely customized front end sitting there. It was the vehicle that had the much too close encounter with the moose. The driver was okay and waiting for help, and while we felt sorry for him, we were sure glad that moose hadn't been a little slower on deciding when to cross the road. I don't think any of us would have fared so well!

We left behind a sizable city in a landscape that is just rather generic – some hills, trees, open fields. A place that felt not that different from home. I was riding navigator with the copy of Milepost on my lap, ticking off such points of interest as turnouts with litter barrels and bridges across streams. The terrain began to change as the hills got higher and the trees got thicker. We passed a mountain lake and began the climb up to the western boundary of the Rocky Mountains. And then there were mountains. All at once, it finally felt real – we were going to Alaska, and there were those magnificent, craggy, high peaks that you see on all the postcards. I could see the layers of rock outlined by snow, showing how relentless the geologic forces were in tilting and twisting a once flat land into mountain peaks.




Our destination for the night was Chetwynd. It proclaims itself the chainsaw carving capital of the world. Wait, I thought that was Hope's claim. Oh, well, I guess there can be two of them. Maybe they have a "saw-off" to determine who gets that title for the year. There were certainly lots of sculptures around the town. We stayed at the Westwind RV park. Nothing special and wi-fi was spotty at best. It's funny how that is rapidly becoming one of the criteria for excellence in and RV park!