July 10 - on the road again

Before Ardith went to bed last night, she noticed the alarm was set and turned it off.  Shortly after 5AM, she heard the alarm go off in the room above us, at 5:30, she heard him leave by the noise on the steps next to our room. Ardith put a pillow over her head to block out the stair noise.  Jim heard none of that.  At 6:10, he heard a burbling sound.  He decided that Ardith had set up the coffee maker (which she had not done) and he went back to sleep.  5 minutes later, Ardith heard the sound, woke Jim and said that something was being dragged outside.  He told her it was the coffee maker and shut it off.  Someone of the previous occupants had set it to go off automatically and the cleaning staff had not turned it off.  At 7:15, Ardith heard a beeping sound and woke Jim to tell him that something was making noise. She thought it was his cell phone alarm. It turned out to be the alarm clock in extra room that had gone off.  It had also been previously set and not turned off by the cleaning staff.   We gave in and got up. There was nothing else left to go off!

There was nice scenery along the road, but not special enough to stop for pictures and no special wildlife.  The one thing that amazed us was thousands of acres of a crop with brilliant yellow flowers.  We forgot to ask anybody what it was. (One of my friends recently told me it was canola.)

 

Our only stop today other than a quick undistinguished lunch was in Dawson Creek, British Columbia.  Dawson Creek is Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway and we had just driven the whole 1,390 miles.  The city has a monument where the highway used to start, just a few blocks from its current location. 

Jim also saw some fun murals.

We stopped at the visitors’ center and spent over an hour in its small museum.   There were lots of artifacts that showed life there long ago (75-100 years). 

Jim couldn’t understand why they put a lot of modern (it seems we had one of those just a few years ago) things in a museum, though.

Ardith was impressed by a doll house built by a local woman out of scrounged materials.  She made a replica of her girlhood home from the 1930s.

Our favorite thing was a great video about the building of the Alaska Highway.  The video was edited from films made in the 1940s, most of the actual construction.

The United States had wanted a highway to Alaska for many years, to connect the then 48 states with its huge Territory to the north.  The Canadian government refused or stalled for decades.  Then World War II broke out and President Franklin Roosevelt convinced the Canadian authorities that it was necessary for the defense of both countries.  Canada insisted that the US pay the full cost and turn the road over to them after the war ended.  The US Army, with the help of some civilians, built a “pioneer road”  in well under a year (spring to fall 1942), with huge obstacles overcome.  The next year, a force of mostly civilian contractors, under the supervision of the Public Roads Administration, rebuilt most of the really troublesome stretches, for example, replacing log bridges with steel bridges.

We ended up in Grand Prairie for the evening. Jim was totally surprised by the size of the city.  He had looked for it in the AAA Western Canada Tourguide, but didn’t find it.  The problem was that it is in Alberta, not British Columbia.  Another surprise was that there was another time zone change, the 3^rd in 4 days.  Again, they started looking for dinner at what they thought was 8PM but was really 9.  All the non-chain places were closed.  We had another delicious dinner at another Earl’s, somewhat to Jim’s dismay. Jim had a black bean soup and a nice salad.  Ardith had Chicken Parmesan with beets and carrots.