Woke up at 6AM and northern sun has been up for a while. We stayed at Fox Creek Best Western. This stop is a center for construction and drilling workers. Lots of trucks and dust; sign on the door is remove your muddy boots or put on surgical booties to cover them. We have a boot tray in the room with cleaning cloths. But the hotel is beautiful. Best warm water, clean pool and sauna which we enjoyed. No nearby restaurants so we eat from the food we packed. The breakfast was fit for workers, eggs benedict, waffles, yogurt parfait and cheddar cheese sausage etc. Breakfast has been included in all our hotel stays. It is getting confusing keeping the hotel rooms straight. A different place each day. All beds have been comfortable. We are definitely moving north, more black spruce, birch an aspen tree. The road is two lane and good shape. Sunny all day and temp is rising to 80 degrees, but no humidity. Signs for moose but don’t see any. Some crop farming and cattle but petroleum and natural gas drilling and fracking are supreme. The towns are small and very rare population in between. Not much to see but here is more taiga with black spruce and signs of past forest fires. Lots of bog and beavers. Where are the mountains? The Al Can was constructed for WWII and is the most direct route with less elevation changes. But not the most scenic, it travels east of the Rockies. We will take the western route home driving through mountains on way back in September. We arrive Fort Nelson, Woodlands Hotel, a locally owned, which is rare. FN had a boom with petroleum and logging but that has run out and population dropped. They are back to tourism as mainstay. Beautiful hotel, our suite has office area and compact kitchen. No close dining that we can walk to, so stay at hotel dining which is upscale. Although we eat pierogies and poutine. We are asleep by 9PM, it was a long day of 9 hours (road did not allow high speed). Staff promises tomorrow we will be in the mountains and drive over the summit, highest elevation on the Al Can. We are on AK time now, four hours difference from Hudson. Nighty, night.
Total Trip Miles 3118
