ALCAN My Man - The Muskwa River Has Been Crossed

A great day on the ALCAN (aka Alaska, aka Alaska-Canada) Highway from Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson. Such pretty country. You climb up out of Dawson Creek still in that high prairie country. The next thing you know, you are over 900 m and coming down into valleys at 800 m.

You drop back down in to the Peace River Valley at Taylor - and I think it was about 350 m when  you cross the river.  You can see the bridge in this picture.

Then - You climb back out to Fort St John - and you just start to climb. The Next thing you know, you are peaking over 900 m and descending to over 800m - and then - you are over 1200 m a couple of times with the valleys being down at 1000 m. The forest continues to be mostly conifers - with a bunch of white birch, poplar, and some willow. I just finally got around to looking up the makeup of the boreal forest - and the linked Wiki article does a good job describing it.

We missed a ton of great pictures- because not safe to pull over. Here are a couple which really do not give much of an idea from when we were waiting for the one way traffic for some of the construction. A bunch of times - we could see the "real" mountains off to the west. Very Pretty.

A couple of places I need to mention. The valley that you drop down into at the Sikanni Chief River is incredibly pretty. Pretty curvy road down, a nice old bridge, and then back up you go. Not long after, at Buckinghorse River - the same thing - just fantasic.

About 80 km south of Fort Nelson - we stopped to look at this escarpment.

Then - just before Fort Nelson - across the Muskwa River - another pretty river and again no pictures!

So - here we are in Fort Nelson! Tomorrow - off we go to Watson Lake.