June 5th

Mike tried to wake me up at 6 a.m. this morning because he was ready to get on the road. I wasn’t. I managed to sleep until 7 and then reluctantly arose. We stopped at three different stores on the road that had fishing licenses painted on the outside of the store and none of them sell licenses anymore. We were so tempted to fish that we even put our poles together. The only town of any size that we saw today was Chetwynd. We stopped in town because we could connect to the internet there. We were able to purchase the fishing licenses on-line and so now we are legal! We also called some friends and connected via Skype with Amie, Tony and the boys. It was wonderful to see their shining faces. Noah read some beginning readers to us, Luke showed us his big boy underwear and both boys were curious about our trip. Amie and Noah have an interactive map set up on Google where they can track us, and had discovered that if we took the Tumbler Ridge loop, we could see some dinosaur tracks. We had been planning on taking that loop, but Noah strongly suggested that we go see the tracks. I am sure that he could not imagine passing up the opportunity. We had planned on camping in one park, but when we got there the park was largely full of tipsy roughnecks with four wheelers, and a large group of young adults with very loud music. So we went to the one commercial RV site and found a gravel parking lot with some picnic tables for $30. Neither option seemed great. We ended up about five miles down the road in a quiet peaceful clear-cut. I have been watching for animals all evening, but so far have only seen dirt bikes. Tomorrow, we plan on going to see a dinosaur museum and some footprints. Apparently in 2000, two boys found the foot prints while tubing down a river. That has to be every boys dream. Further exploration has led to archeological digs and now the museum has over 400 bones from the digs. There is also an art gallery that I can’t pass up.

Driving today was beautiful. The forests are about half Aspen and Birch and half pine. It creates a striking color pallet of lime green and dark forest green. The sky has been a vivid cerulean blue with lots of puffy white clouds that look like they came right out of a five year old’s drawing. We passed at least 20 lakes and ponds and lots of marshlands. We did some climbing up mountains, but most of the drive has been in high mountain plateaus. Tonight we played three card games that Alison and Bobby gave us and cribbage. I have Mike hooked on Miles Bornes and I still love Monopoly, even in the card form! Of course, Mike is still ahead in the win department.