Days 4, 5, and 6...WHEW!

Day 4 was our most challenging so far...and hopefully, the most challenging of our entire trip! We made it a whopping 139 miles that day! We left Watson Lake Monday morning when about 2 hours out, we got a flat tire on the U-Haul trailer. U-Haul doesn't give you any spare tires; just a 1-800 number to call when you get one. We had two flat tires in Anchorage just while parked in front of our house for the 10 days before going to a hotel! Of course, an 800 number doesn't work if you have no cell phone service and you are in a remote part of Canada where there isn't a sign of a "live" town. We first backtracked to see if we could find anyone who would answer their door in a small (I'm talking about a half-dozen houses and a summer camping spot) town. No luck there, so we drove 40 miles east until we hit the next town, Laird River. After several phone calls to U-Haul, they finally figured out where on the map we were. They had to dispatch someone from Watson Lake (where we spent the previous night). By the time the U-Haul service guy made it to us and replaced the tire, it was dark and snowing like crazy. We had to drive the 40 miles back to Laird River before we could stop for the night. We stayed in a log cabin hotel that was more like a house...only without televisions or phones in the rooms and no internet service.This picture was taken while we were eating lunch in the car (ordered from the Laird Hot Springs Hotel & Restaurant where we stayed later that night) because we couldn't leave the animals in the car. The snowflakes were huge during this snowfall.

This was our visibility (or lack thereof) while driving back to our U-Haul trailer to meet the service guy. It was like this with darkness added by the time we were able to get back on the road at about 7:00 p.m. that night. It took us about 1½ hours to drive that 40 miles back to Laird River.

This was our happy butts about noon Tuesday when we stopped for lunch. We were finally making some headway!

Check out how thick the snow was packed on the back of the U-Haul.
O'Ryan had his eye on something interesting! No telling what it was. And, of course, Rango was trying to see what was going on. lol Hemi doesn't do much wandering in the car. He pretty much stays in his "fraidy hole" in the back seat.

This is one of the many bison we saw in British Columbia, Canada. The bison are an endangered species in British Columbia, with the herd being only about 250. They say 20 a year get killed by automobile collisions. During our drive in the dark and snow storm Monday night, we were concerned that we wouldn't see any bison standing in the road (they tend to do that since the snow is not as deep), but it was a couple of moose that scared the sh*t out of us instead! We were about five minutes from "landing" at Laird River when Bob had to slam on brakes and swerve to miss two moose that were in the middle of the road. Luckily, they moved when they heard the horn.




We drove from Laird River to Dawson Creek (496 miles!!!) on Tuesday. It felt great to finally be able to make some progress. Then on Wednesday morning we headed to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, making it there about 4:00 p.m. Edmonton is the first "real" city we've seen since we left Anchorage. I think the worst is behind us now. We are officially half-way through (mileage-wise) our trip.