This was our longest day. Approximately 571 miles. We did it to "catch up" to the schedule. Although we pretty much stopped when and where we wanted to and visited whatever interested us on the way, we did have an itinerary with days blocked out into 250 to 350 mile segments with a village as a destination each day. In this way we knew that if we lingered we would have to make up X miles later on to get back to NY on time.
From FSJ down to Hinton we ran into a ferocious headwind. There was tremendous dust and the gusts of wind pushed us all over the road.We hit only a few drops of rain all day that we quickly ran through. It was so hot and dry we were almost wishing for rain to cool us off. The fire danger in BC and AB is very high.
At Dawson Creek we hit mile one on the AlCan. We stopped to take pictures and get gas then blew on down to Grande Prairie. This is where the wind really picked up as we entered the edges of the Alberta prairie. Grande Prairie is a flat, windswept town that is undergoing a tremendous economic boom from gas, oil sand, and coal extraction. It felt like everything was moving quickly, the wind, the traffic, the construction. The buildings seem to be going up quick, cheap and obsolescent and made me feel that it all would be torn down in 20 years. We headed south into the headwind toward Grande Cache. We should have gotten gas. Still unfamiliar with the kilometer/mile conversion we mistook 134 miles for 134 kilometers. If we weren't bucking the headwind we would have been OK. As it was Eric ran out of gas about 4 miles from Grande Cache. Lou and I headed into town to look for a gas can. The station we stopped at didn't have one, but a fellow came over to make small talk as usually happened when we stopped anywhere. As it turned out his pickup had a blown motor at his camp about 1 mile south of where Eirc was stranded and he and his wife were in town to pick up groceries on their ATV's. He told us to go back ot his camp and use his gas. This was so typically generous of just about everybody we met on the road. I was all set to head out when the guy mentioned he used to be a Polaris dealer. Oh Boy! That did it. He and Lou got into reminiscing about long ago obsolete but still mythical Polaris snow machines. I finally had to remind Lou of his duty to his son stranded out on the highway probably being stalked by a grizzly bear as he was trading tall tales with the ex-Polaris dealer. We headed out. On the way we met Eric returning. U-turn and back to the station where Eric explained that 4 vehicles had stopped offering rides but no gas until the last fellow in a pick up truck opened his tailgate to reveal 4 or 5 cans of gas. Eric took a gallon (after the guy offered to fill it up) and headed on in to town. What great people we met on the road!
I'll describe Hinton in my next post.
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