Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary: Day 3: Grande Cache AB

The first thing you see, through the smoke, after leaving Grande Cache, is a sign reading "No Services for 183 km". This is one reason why electric cars will take a while to catch on in rural Canada. Said 183 km are much the same as the final 140 of yesterday, viz. many, many trees, logging pads and the odd oil/gas well. And roadworks. And getting stuck behind a laden B-double tanker going up a hill. A B-double tanker looks like this:

and Canada is full of them. Actually it's full of B-double trailers of every conceivable sort which, for maximum Canadianness, should be hauled by an International LoneStar. Which looks like this:

These things are inexplicably popular north of the 49th Parallel. I've seen more in three days than in three weeks in USAnia. Why?

After a couple of hours of varying degrees of bugger-all, Grande Prairie comes as a bit of a shock, being a town of some 60,000+ inhabitants. Together with all the traffic lights, shopping centers, car dealers and Timmys that make up the trappings of civilisation. The remainder of the day's trip is through the Peace River Country, which can't make up its mind whether to be prairie or forest and so decides to be both, with roadworks. And rain. As a result of the roadworks and rain, my formerly-pristine white motor-car¹ is acquiring a fine coating of North Country Muck. Hurrah!

Through Wembley and Hythe to Dawson Creek, where there is a this:

What is Mile 0 on the Alaska Highway. The board at the top gives distances:

Which are in miles... Just over the road are a couple of murals half-hidden down an alley, of which this is one:

The Alaska Highway hav a very interesting history if you are interested in hist. which few boys are. Post-Pearl Harbor even the most-dimwitted military idiot realised that Alaska was really quite vulnerable to attack by Japanese forces, especially given that there were neither road nor rail² links to Canada and the Lower 48. Construction started in March 1942 and was completed by the end of October. Obv it's been improved a bit since then, as well as losing a couple of hundred miles of length. The first fifty miles were not a problem. Only 1433³ more to Fairbanks...

Ye Mappe says I'm still in the Mountain Time Zone, but apparently Fort St John thinks otherwise, so it was only 2 pm when I arrived here, and there's whizzy wired internet to boot, which is why this entry is so early. It's also eight degrees and raining out there even though the place is only slightly further north than Edinburgh. I may have to put on a jumper and Proper Shoes, with socks.

# of BEARS seen so far: 1 (albeit dead). But there was a giant beaver: