Dawson Creek, BC
We continued our string of relatively easy drives,
with the short trip from Grande Prairie to Dawson Creek. Since we needed to do lots of laundry and a bit of coach cleaning, and nobody else did, we stayed at a local campground while Rod/Jean and Bob/Marlene stopped at the Wal-Mart in town.Dawson Creek is recognized as the "start of the Alaska Highway", with the requisite "Mile Zero" marker as a needed photo opp. Actually, there are three markers - "original", "official", and "historic". Can't have enough markers, right?
The Alaska Highway (then called the Alcan) was built in 1942 during World War II in order to protect North America from Japanese invasion. In fact, Japan did take several of the Aleutian Islands early in the war, and a significant portion of the rationale for the construction of the road (hard to call a 60' wide dirt road a "highway" by today's standards) was to get something in the "done column" in the mind of the general public, as well as providing a support line for aircraft deployed in the far Northwest.
After we got set up, Geri tackled the cleaning (I helped a little, but she did a week's worth of cleaning today") and laundry. In the afternoon, I ventured into town to join the rest of our happy band in viewing and recording the sights. We joked that we could make a killing by setting up a booth to take tourists' pictures. Click here for ours.
Later, while Rod and Bob visited another historic site, Jean and Marlene visited with Geri and the pups. Merlin was his "normal" friendly self (in a good way).
More from Dawson Creek tomorrow...
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