Charlie Lake Provincial Park--Fort St.John B.C.

I got a nice Early start yesterday(Friday)from the Summit Lake Campground and immediately the decent started out onto the eastern side of the great divide.Above is a shot looking back from a viewpoint,at the northern Rockies.The shot below is also taken from the same spot as you can see the land is flattening out.

And after more descending,the countryside looks like this below.A lot like the country west of Prince George,where I showed a similar photo.Actually all the way to Fort Nelson was a very pretty drive.

I arrived in Fort Nelson in the late morning.Its another one of those towns in the middle of nowhere,that is a service centre for the area.It has about 5000 people. Many of these towns seem to be built with a parallel service road on each side of the highway with the businesses strung out over quite a distance.The main highway is to the right in this shot.

From there we head south on the Alaska Highway toward Fort St John and the Peace country.The whole southward trip was a mix of heavy rain showers and sun,at least it washed the bugs off the windshield.I arrived at Charlie Lake which is just 11k's north of Fort St. John about 3pm and to my surprise for a Friday, found the campground fairly quiet,not even a quarter full.I selected the best spot I could as I wandered around with compass in hand,to get a clear shot for the satellite dishes.As you can see in the photo below,the Internet dish is almost out on the roadway.Just think this blog is coming out of that thing right now.

So now we are up to today.This morning I went into Fort St. John, a small city of about 20,000 with an area population around 40,000.Its actually the second largest town on the Alaska Highway after Whitehorse.I gassed up at the Safeway,got 7 cents a liter off with my Safeway card....I like that...then drove around looking at the place.

One of the first things I noticed was that all the sports complexes are in one area near the Mall,even an indoor rink for the little guys and another for the rest of the peeps.

And look below at the brand new Olympic size Arena being built.Seems to be quite a sports town.

Here's the Totem Mall across the road.I had to go into "Staples"and buy a new flash drive because I couldn't load any more pics into my "puter"cuz the C drive was full.Time to clean house I guess.

On the way out of town I noticed something I thought was amusing.Below is a pic of McDonald's and notice the name of the business next door.Its a car wash.

And finally a big hotel in the outskirts which houses a "Chances"and a Tony Roma Restaurant along with the Hotel.All in all not a bad little city for the far north.Of course this is a big oil and gas area.When I was leaving Fort Nelson earlier,I saw a huge gas processing plant on the southern outskirts.

So tomorrow I hit the road again for the final 50 miles of the Alaska Highway to Dawson Creek,And by the way,the highway is really in good shape.There are some dusty repair area's,but all in all a great highway.And fairly quiet,which makes the drive even more relaxing,especially if you do come upon wildlife by the road,stopping doesn't create a problem with so little traffic.

By tomorrow night I should be stopping around Grand Cashe Alberta,then the next day passing through Jasper National Park and back into B.C. and down through Blue River to Kamloops.That will be my round trip as I started this little journey a month ago from the Kamloops Area.Should be home Wed/Thurs.