We said goodbye to Joan and Chuck, Hal and Kim and Pete, Pete hooked back up with us after dropping Bunny off to fly home, (her Mom passed away, our condolences to her and the family) and headed out on our last legs of the Walkabout Canada-Alaska trip down the ALCAN. Our destination for the day was unknown, we knew we wanted to stop at Watson Lake and Laird Hot Springs. What a safari, we saw 9 bears (grizzly and black), Moose, Bison and sheep! One of our favorites was a black bear with 2 cubs born this year, what a thrill. Pictures are worth a thousand words.
We stopped in Watson Lake where there are tens of thousands of signs.
The first sign was put up during World War II when the American soldiers were home sick and put up signs with the names of the towns they came from. While we did not bring a sign we put a card with our names in a plastic bag and hung it up.
We continued on down the ALCAN to Laird Hot Springs. This is where the herd of Bison were right before the entrance! We proceeded into the park and got the last camping spot (lucky Janice passed the last 2 rigs a few miles before the park since they came in behind us and did not get a spot..Yikes!).
Laird Hot Springs was magnificent. This is a natural springs, not made into swimming pools. There is gravel on the bottom, with a few small wood dams, the water is maybe 2 feet deep. The closer you get to the spring’s origin, the hotter the water gets. We were only able to go a short way up because it was too hot for us!
We had a lovely evening dip and also first thing in the morning we were the first there..wow..
After our lovely hot springs dip we headed down the ALCAN towards Dawson Creek, thinking we would stop around Fort Nelson. As usual it did not turn out to be a place to stay so we continued along looking for a camp. Long story short, the place we thought to stop was full, the state park was blocked, road closed so we went right back (430 miles again) to Dawson Creek and our friends at the golf/RV campground, John and Melanie. It was raining a lot in the past 5 days so the facility was quite muddy and of course while trying to park Janice got the rig stuck in the mud. John got his trusty tractor and pushed from the rear on the trailer hitch and we were out! We parked in another location, a little muddy but we made it. The next morning we were going to play golf but it made no sense the course was way to wet and the mosquitoes were in full attack! We changed our plans and went to meet others down the road. We said goodbye to our friends and reminded them to come to Florida this winter and we will have some fun together!
We stopped at the visitors center on the way out of town. This was where our adventure started exactly 8 weeks ago when we met all the RoadTrek team there, fond memories of the entire trip.