Edmonton, AB – July 9-10
We bade farewell to our new friends, Ted and Dona Dumont, and headed for Edmonton, Alberta. It was a long drive through beautiful, bright yellow canola fields. We met up with more fellow Airstreamers, Darlene and Bob Caldwell, and went out for dinner and a short drive around the area. Bob is a retired city planner, so he knows EVERYTHING about Edmonton, and the next day, he chauffeured us around for a cook’s tour of the city and ended the afternoon having drinks at the Fairmont Macdonald and taking a ride on the funicular down to the river.
Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Edmonton are all very interesting cities, but the temperatures can be -40F degrees for long stretches of time and the frost line is 8 feet deep, where ours in Maine is 3 feet. No wonder we see so many Canadian Snow Birds in FL.
Dawson Creek, BC – July 11
We’ll, it was another exciting day on the RailTrail! We left Edmonton for Dawson Creek on a beautiful day. We saw our first moose, but sadly it was roadkill. It was smooth sailing for much of the trip, but after traveling over a wavy patch of roadway (like a cosine wave) a Good Samaritan named Jim Shannon flagged us down to tell us that our bike rack had bent over and the bikes were dragging behind the trailer! He kindly took us to his shop and helped Vernon disassemble the bike rack and stow the bikes in the Airstream.
We profusely thanked Jim and his wife and off we went to Dawson Creek where we met up with the group we will be traveling with for the next 2 months.
Again, I ask “what’s next?”
Dawson Creek July 11-13
First thing in the morning we headed to a trailer repair shop to get advice on what we could do to address our bike rack situation. We promptly junked our existing rack and went to a metal fabrication shop and got a hitch receptacle installed on the back bumper of the Airstream so we can get a heavy duty bike rack that won’t break on the rough roads ahead. Of course, we have to wait till we get to Fairbanks in about 2 weeks since there aren’t many bike shops in these parts.
We set out on the Alaska Highway from Dawson Creek at Mile Marker 0 and will take it to its terminus in Fairbanks before heading back south in Alaska. Happy to say we arrived in Fort Nelson without incident! It was a beautiful drive with some really steep, curving roads. I have to admit that I’m REALLY glad we have this new Super Duty truck.