Today was the first day of travel on the Alaska Highway. We have been seeing lots of huge trucks and big equipment traversing the roads with us. The big industries seem to be oil/petroleum based and logging and agriculture, in this part of the country. These are some of the trucks we saw today. The first one is massive crane. It is so big that the working part has to be rested on a trailer behind it. No, that is not our truck in the foreground. The second picture is of two trucks beside each other, each hauling several large items. Next is a logging truck. These usually have three trailers with each trailer carrying logs sorted by size and length. Then, there are two trucks in the last photo. One is a freight carrying truck like we usually see and the other is carrying a caterpillar earth mover of some sort.
I said that there is a lot of oil industry here. There is a pipeline being built that will carry oil from Alberta to the Pacific coast of British Columbia. There is much controversy, that is surrounding it, being shown on local TV , just as we have in the U.S.A. surrounding the Keystone pipeline. None the less, it is big business here. We drove through an area that was being developed with oil wells and refineries, day before yesterday , in search of a campground that we thought we might want to stay at. We ended up going elsewhere. Here are a couple pictures of an oil refining operation that we passed. Places like this can be seen all over, although sometimes they are behind groves of trees along the highway.
The road has been quite good so far despite having all of that heavy equipment being transported on it daily. We did come to a curvy, steep grade down hill on the way into one of the towns. The view was beautiful going to the town of Taylor, B.C.
Another town was Fort St. John, B.C. It is called the Energetic City. Guess what their main industry is, oil. I like their town sign.
Like I said, the road has not been bad so far. This is what it looks like most of the time. The second picture is of some people riding an ATV along the side of the road in the grassy area. We often see tracks along that grassy area, where there seems to be a trail that has been worn into the ground. I tried taking a photo of it, but it just didn’t come out right.
As you know, I like taking pictures of what we think of as unusual signs along the road. They are ones that are similar to ours, but different. Many, we would not see in our area of the country. Here is another one. Can you figure out what it means? We have some that mean the same thing, only they are displayed differently.
We are camping at the Prophet River Airstrip Camping Area. It is an airstrip that is used by forest fire fighters, if there is a fire. It used to be a Provincial Park, but has been dropped from that system and is no longer maintained on a regular basis, It is a fine place and it is free and we are the only ones here tonight. There is evidence that others have been here recently, though. Here is our campsite for tonight., both close up and from a distance. The mosquitos are out in force. I guess they are trying to get us used to what we hear it is like in Alaska.
There are beautiful wild flowers here. These are just a few. Don’t ask me what they are, except for the wild roses, pink and dark pink. I just think they are beautiful. There are also a lot of dandelions all over both Alberta and British Columbia. You can see some sticking up in the second picture above. The last picture is bunch of cotton, from a cottonwood tree, that has collected in this spot after being blown by the wind.
That is all for today. I will try to get some more posts ready to be uploaded to catch up with everything we have been doing.
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