Northern BC Roadtrip

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I’m back after an extended holiday. Been pretty much doggin’ it since Christmas. Most recently, Marilyn and I took a 1500 mile road trip north to visit her Dad in Dawson Creek. I shot a few videos of scenery through the windshield with my Blackberry. The Blackberry is my latest toy. You can find an evaluation post here, if you’re interested. The above clip is one example and shows the Fraser Canyon country near the junction with the Thompson river.

Dawson Creek is an interesting little town up in the Peace River valley. Its chief claim to fame (apart from being Marilyn’s hometown ) is that the Alaska Highway starts there. The mile zero post for the highway is smack in the center of town, and Marilyn’s father is the one who made it. I couldn’t get a picture due to the city fathers having replaced the milepost with a christmas tree.

So Dawson is pretty far north. People told me we were nuts to be going up there in the winter, especially since we were buried in snow here in Vancouver. As it turns out, we had wonderful trip. Roads were bare or semi-bare all the way and we didn’t run into any falling snow at all.

Marilyn’s dad has a professional pool table in his basement and turns out to be quite an eight-ball hustler. The combination of his table and all kinds of special house rules made him a hard act to beat, so I figured Screw this! and taught him to play nine-ball. That leveled the playing field considerably!

Another interesting little town along the way was Chetwynd. Its just a wide spot in the road on the way to Dawson, but, back in 2006 they hosted the world chainsaw carving championship. As a result, there’s a carving on every corner and a whole gallery in the center of town. We spent an hour there snapping away with our Blackberries. Here are a couple of them. I’m going to put the whole works up on a separate page as soon as I get the photo album plugin figured out. This will have to do for now.

For now, here’sÂ a picture of Marilyn and our trusty, road weary jeep taking a break in Chetwynd.