Fort Nelson, BC to Dawson Creek, BC ~ The Convoy!

                                                                                                                                                                                     



The Beginning of the Alaska Highway

Another Traveler!

Where's by Jeep?

In the previous couple of days, you probably noticed that we were driving nearly 300 miles a day. There was a reason for this. Today, in Dawson Creek (the beginning of the Alaska Highway), is the 70^th Anniversary of the famous road. The celebration here in Dawson Creek involved an 85 vehicle convoy of vintage military vehicles from several countries around the world. This included England, Canada, Australia and the United States. The vehicles were of several types: from Jeeps, Three Quarter Tons, Duce and a Half to One and Five tons. Some were converted to campers and one was actually converted to battery power. I really enjoyed seeing this and talking to the many veterans and military buffs. Their organization is called MVPA (Military Vehicle Preservation Association). The old 1940 trucks looked mighty slow moving out for the display down at the center of town. I don’t know how they will make the 1500 mile journey up to Fairbanks over to Denali back across to Dawson City in the Yukon and up as far as the Arctic Circle for their right to say “Been There”!



Mike Picard and Me! (The Electric Jeep Guy)

A short description of our journey down from Fort Nelson goes as follows. We got a campground out of town heading south. The problem with this is the campground was 8 miles in the boonies. We were limited in choices and tired at this time. We paid $17.00 for the privilege of staying in the woods. You win some and you lose some! Moving on with the journal, Fort Nelson is a busy place with the Gas Exploration business. There were several oversize loads waiting for the evening to head to the gas fields. Many companies have staging yards with a multitude of equipment for the fields. The road from Fort Nelson south changes dramatically. It is very well paved with 100 foot clearings on each side. I assume this is for moose visibility as we spotted a couple of road kills and a couple of moose crossing the highway. I had no problem staying at 60 to 65 miles per hour all the way to Dawson Creek, BC.

We pulled into town in early afternoon and soon spotted the military vehicles at Mile 0 Campground. We stopped and asked if they had any spots left. We lucked out with a dry camp site (No problem, they had showers, water and dump station. The rest of the day was spent taking pictures and talking to those people in the MVPA. We could actually give them advice on our opinion of road conditions up north.

That is what we did and saw