Day 17!

It's finally starting to set in on us that we're actually doing it. We're actually moving to the Yukon.

We reached Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway in Dawson Creek today. It's not much more than a wooden signpost, but the tourism office touted it as the "World Famous Alaska Highway". Now, how many of you who haven't lived in this area have heard of this "world famous" attraction?

Still, we began our journey with a stop at Dawson Creek's historic pioneer village. In this case, the "pioneers" began homesteading in 1910, making it quite different from the pioneer villages closer to the Atlantic. It was an interesting mishmash of buildings, devices, and trinkets from the last century, which looked quite odd, given how much life has changed over that period of time.

From there, the Alaska highway was... well... pretty, but unremarkable. I'd say it looked like much of Ontario, or the prairies of Alberta, or, well, almost anywhere in Canada has terrain like this. Just a flat road with a ditch and trees on either side. Without even a radio station to be found, we entertained ourselves with some podcasts while putting miles behind us.

Once we made it past Fort Nelson things got much more interesting, with the mountains returning to our journey once again, and we were treated with more views of wildlife, including three healthy black bears with shiny coats and round bellies, and a moose cow sneaking into the trees.

When we arrived at the signpost for the campsite we were looking for tonight, we turned into a ghost town of sorts: an old lodge and gas station which the proprietors had just walked away from and left to the wildlife and vandals. As we walked through the abandoned buildings, it was unclear what damage was done by humans or by fauna, but it was neat to see it being reclaimed by nature, with a swift nest above each window inside the café. Still, it was eerie to see this moment frozen in time with the dated decor, tube TVs (satellite television!), and other fragments recent enough to still be recognizable from our lifetimes.

We're currently camped at Stone Mountain National Park in that little corner of British Columbia that's in Mountain Time. It's still twilight at midnight, and we've worked out that we only have one more night of camping before we're in our new home in Whitehorse. It's surreal to imagine being in the same place after two and a half weeks of moving every day, and being so far away from our friends and family back in Ontario.

Goodnight friends. It's starting to dawn on us how much we'll miss you.