Canada HATES Us

So today is Day 4... after my little detour off highway 37 a la Clark W Griswold style.. we awoke this morning to rain, rain, and more rain in lovely Hyder, Alaska. We begrudgingly got out of the tent, packed up faster than I Dream of Jeannie can wink an eye (thanks Bea, it's really catching on) and went, yet again, through the Canadian border. After eloquently explaining why we might be reentering Canada again for the 2nd time in 3 days, we were finally on the road again.


(In my defense,  highway 37 or the Cassiar Hwy runs north to south. I knew we were supposed to be going south and therefore using my American grown logic- I figured we just stayed on that road till we hit the junction to head east back over to the main Alcan hwy. When in fact, you have to yield to oncoming traffic and make a 90 degree left hand turn OFF the highway to be continuing ON that very highway... the road I stayed on then became 37A which led me to the lamest little town this side of the panhandle, Stewart, Canada. When we arrived I talked to several locals who assured me that I was not in fact the first idiot to have done this. Ok, that's enough of me displacing blame from myself and onto the Canadian road and traffic engineers because as my loving husband did point out this morning, "Well, you can still read, right?" Right. The Canadians have not taken that from me, yet.) 


We ran into some biker friends we had met at the Sealaska Bar the night before at a gas station on highway 16 and rode with them for some time in the sunshine until a Harley Davidson shop was too much for them to resist and they exited the roadway.


Continuing on we saw less and less wildlife and more and more slow talking Canadians in small, run down villages where shabby mobile homes appear to be the home of choice. One drunk woman approached me at an ATM to ask, "How does this thing work?" And, at another quaint truck stop gas station I heard my new favorite Canadian quote, "Look at the size of these hot dogs, eh?!?!?"


We were hoping to make it to a town called Williams Lake to camp this evening and possibly reunite with our biker buddies... instead we are just outside Prince George on the Alcan camping here at the ever so lovely Been Lazee campground and RV park. Why would we choose to camp so close to Prince George and not continue on the several hours originally planned for today you ask? Because the Alcan or Highway 97 is closed at the moment due to (and dont quote us because we heard this from a rumor mill that consisted of RVers, truckers and motorists stuck in traffic with us) an ambulance who lost control, ran into a power line at a local gas station which in turn closed the highway for at least 6 hours and caused the evacuation of the town of Hixon because of a gas leak.


It's as though Canada doesn't want to let us through... Is she angry that Kai and I have done nothing but poke fun at her accent and her childlike fascination for gas station hot dogs? Or is it because we've completely disobeyed her speed limits, or maybe because we've cursed the fact that our debit cards haven't worked at one ATM machine since arriving? Whatever the reason, she's totally pissed off at us, eh?

Again, on the positive side, its been in the high 70s and according to our new trucker friend, it had been raining all summer. So we consider ourselves lucky to experience the sunshine and amazing scenery whilst being held captive in this massive land. We've also made great "road friends" whom we bump into again and again at local gas stations and rest stops.  Randomly enough, while filling up in the Yukon, I looked at the guy at the pump next to us only to realize that it was Bret, a CT-scan tech from Alaska Regional. He too was moving down south. What a loss to AK Regional too because he was seriously the ONLY nice CT-scan guy down there.


So, we still have 560 miles to go just to get to Seattle where we hoped to visit friends Nate and Rose and baby Kai on our way down to meet up with my fam for a weekend in Bend, OR. Fingers crossed we make it out of this place alive by sometime next week... haha


Trying our hardest to keep the hope alive,
Nicki and Kai