Day 6: July 9, 2019

Today, we stepped off the pier, beginning our journey on the Alaska Highway.

This pic is at the traffic circle in Dawson Creek, which begins the roadway. As you might suspect, this is a popular tourist/photo stop.

This is the actual mile marker "O" for the official start:

On the days before, we had seen moose and caribou. Today, we saw no wildlife - just cold (40s), wet weather. I have on every form of Jacket and thermal top I brought with me. Six layers, and I was still cold.

We stopped at a quirky roadside gas station at Pink Mountain shown below. The lady running the operation was even quirkier. It was a weird place. She stays for the winter. I cannot image what that is like.

As we moved further from civilization, the gas has become more expensive and the distances between gas stations became increasingly longer. We are now outside of cell coverage, and my Sirius radio only works on occasion. No music is a problem. I'm defaulting to the bluetooth - cell phone feed to provide my tunes. 

There is a lot of construction/energy work here, where the trucks enter the roadway from dirt side roads. There is mud and dirt everywhere on the roadway, tracked by the trucks entering from the sideroads.

In Fort Nelson, we stopped near our hotel for food and decided to drive on to see the rest of the town. It turns out that the area around our hotel is the town. This is incredibly remote. 

We rode 300 miles today, and racked up 2,729 miles since leaving the base camp. It was 300 miles of wilderness today. 

Tomorrow, it is on to Watson Lake and the Yukon Territories.