Saturday July 10, 2010

Once again early morning wake up call!!! Then to top it off found out the time changed again, now we are 2 hours behind home! Paul wanted to get an early start, since we were told wildlife is spotted better early morning, and this was suppose to be the beginning of wildlife territory. Well, he was right we spotted 2 moose right off the bat, a mother and her baby. They were crossing the road right in front of us. Then shortly after that we saw two black bear, one we got pretty close to! It was truly amazing! That pretty much made Paul’s day!

We arrived in Fort Nelson around 12 noon. The girls spotted an A&W fast food rest. while we were getting gas and begged Dad to eat lunch there. At first he said no, but since we really hadn’t eaten out this trip he gave into them, then quickly was regretting it when all 4 lunch sandwiches and rootbeers came to $44.!!!!!!!Yikes. I quietly told the girls they REALLY needed to eat every last french fry!

After that we started the climb through the Canadian Rockies. How beautiful! The roads were; very steep and winding, and dusty! Max. speed limit was close to 60mph, but once we got deep into the mountains, about 30-40mph max, but oh sooo beautiful!!! Words can’t begin to describe it. We even experienced road work delays in the mountains, just can’t escape it!

Was a good day for wildlife viewing, aside from the bear and moose we saw in the morning, we also encountered another bear and alot of sheep. Those were on the road and we had to stop for them to move. There were babies and mammas. Very cute!

Arrived at Laird Hot Springs around 4pm. Even though I had found a full hookup campground, Paul thought it would be fun to stay at the Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park, where the hot spring pools are located. This was a NO hookup park!! Much cheaper in price, just no electricity, water, or sewer. The problem for the girls and I was mainly was that we were unable to charge our cameras, ipods, and computers! Not to mention I would not have hair dryer, straightener, or coffee maker in the morning. Thank goodness for generators!! We managed to talk Paul into running the generator for a while in the evening to charge our stuff!

The upside of this stop was the awesome hot springs. There were two pools of them. The upper and the lower. They were very, very hot! But oh so relaxing. The girls

commented on how good their skin felt later that night. We all enjoyed that experience.

We met a really nice couple from southern British Columbia, that were on their way back from Alaska, they gave us some useful tips on Alaska.

We finally got to have a campfire at night. This made for a perfect ending to our day! Tried to turn in early, however, the sun didn’t want to set. Woke at around 3am only to see if was still pretty light out.