We started our journey on the Alaska Highway appropriately at Mile 0 in Dawson Creek.  From here, we cruised through Fort St. John (where we gave poor mud-covered B a good wash) and on to Fort Nelson where we broke camp for the night at a lovely forestry site a few miles from town.

As a quick aside….if you don’t know the story of the Alaska Highway, it is a rather interesting one.  During WWII, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were tasked with building a supply road to Alaska in response to the threat from the Japanese.  In 1942, it took less than nine months to build the road from Dawson Creek to Delta Junction, just outside of Fairbanks.  The two ends of the road met at Contact Creek near the Yukon/BC border.  All tolled the original road was nearly 1500 miles long with hundreds of bridges! Crazy to think about the manpower and resources it must have taken to accomplish this.  Now back to our journey on the highway…

From Fort Nelson, we continued north through Summit Lake (the highest point on the Alaska Highway) and on to Muncho Lake Provincial Park.  We gave B a short break here and stayed for three nights at the Northern Rockies Lodge.  OK, I admit, it was so that I could have a bath and sleep in a real bed!  In any event, it was a spur of the moment decision and quite a lovely find.  The lodge was great and the setting on Muncho Lake was just spectacular.  While we were there, we hired Urs, lodge proprietor and bush pilot/guide to take us out for a day of fly in fishing.  We landed on the aptly named Fishing Lake for a day of Northern Pike fishing.  It was really warm – the hottest day of the summer by far – and the fish were a bit lethargic in the morning.  We had better luck in the afternoon though and landed enough for our shore lunch plus a few that were safely released back into the wild to fight another day.  The flight in was amazing and Warren was pretty thrilled to be in the co-pilot seat.  I suspect flying lessons may be in his future….

A little further down the Highway between Muncho Lake and the Yukon border, we encountered bison…..first one old bull walking with purpose down the road and completely ignoring us snapping away with our cameras…..then larger groups of the beasts on the road allowance.  The little babies playing in the dirt, chasing each other and butting heads were the cutest!  I had heard that there were bison roaming around this section of the Highway but never expected to see quite so many of them.  It was pretty cool to see them thriving in their natural environment.