Off to Dawson Creek!!

Up at Mark’s on Wednesday morning, fed dogs, said goodbye to the delightful Tallulah and took off about mid morning. Had the chains on the truck thinking that with the light rain and warm temperatures we could have a problem leaving his driveway and his road out to the highway. Got out to the highway and stopped to take the chains of and ………….one chain was gone. Turn around back to Mark’s drive 3 miles and I walked up the drive while Randy turned the truck around and found it in the drive half way to the house!! Back to the highway and down the road- got through Edmonton fine, roads wet but not slippery. Stopped for fuel at the same place we stayed 3 days last year getting the trailer axle replaced – memories……not necessarily good ones! Good traveling and we had planned to stop and maybe train at Don Cousin’s in Valley View – but got through Valley View and had not seen the sign for his drive –stopped at an Indian reservation convenience store to ask if they knew where he lived and a nice Indian (1st nations person as they are referred to in Canada) told us he was 10 more minutes up the highway – proceeded to pull out of the gas station bay and promptly got stuck in the foot deep melting snow – another nice Indian hooked on to us and jerked but couldn’t pull us out – then another nice Indian hooked us on to his 8000 gallon water truck and out, slick as a whistle! By this time it is getting dark and we never saw the sign to Don’s and thought we could easily get stuck in his drive, so we continued to Grand Prairie. We were both looking at the signs, but somehow missed a turn and ended up driving through a subdivision with the same deep, melting snow. This time, luckily, we did not get stuck – probably only because we held our breath the whole way through!! Got back on track and drove all the way to Beaver Lodge for the nite. The picture of the beaver statue I will post when I download it shows right where we stayed in a truck lot. It was so warm we never even turned the heat on all night!!! Amazingly everything seems to be working and I was even able to make a pot of coffee morning! The only dog issue we are having is the there is a virus going thru the truck and 2 by 2 they are having liquid stools. Hopefully we will be over it by the time we reach Alaska and the Exxon Open race!!
Oh I forgot, yesterday driving I saw a moose on the side of the road, probably 50 ft away! And a few times we have seen this long tailed black and white bird- prize to the first person to correctly identify the species!!!

We made it to Dawson Creek at mid-day after dropping the dogs - in for a McDonald's treat!!!