I got up really early, grabbed a coffee at the hotel breakfast bar and set off at 6 am to gas up at the gas station just down the road. I had 502 miles to go to Prince George and, having driven over 2,800 miles in the last 8 days I was starting to get a little tired.
I knew that BC 97 was now open in the places where it had been cut off, though repairs so far were only allowing traffic in one direction at a time. I also knew that although the first half of my journey to Prince George would be over similar ground to that since I left the Rockies before Fort Nelson, I was now on the wrong side of the Rockies and would have to cross them again West of Dawson Creek. To make matters worse, the closure of BC 97 in a couple of places would mean a pent-up volume of traffic on the road. I was booked on the 15:45 pm ferry out of Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver tomorrow, about a 1,000 miles away, so to keep my reservation would have to be there before 15:15 pm on the 10th, which meant that I must reach Prince Rupert today.
The one thing in my favour was that although I had left the hotel at 6 am, in relative terms I had left at 5 am. BC is a little like Texas in that almost everyone thinks it only has one time zone, Central for Texas and Pacific for BC. This is true for most of both states, but each has a little hold out on the border with its neighbouring state. El Paso, which borders New Mexico, is on Mountain time and so is Fort Nelson, which borders Alberta.
Was that confusing enough? If not try this… had I continued on to Fort St. John/Dawson Creek area on BC 97 then I would have effectively entered a third timezone in BC as that area keeps Mountain time but they keep the Standard version of it all year round. This means that although I would have entered that area, the time would not have changed because Pacific Summertime = Mountain Standard Time. Thank God that clock in my Subie can sort it all out using a satellite signal!
I decided that today I would not video any of the route but instead keep my wits about me and really focus on driving and making good, but safe, progress.
I made good and uneventful progress through the morning until I got to the corner of Charlie Lake Provincial Part, when the satnav instructed me to turn right on to BC 29 which appeared to be a minor road, although it was paved. This puzzled me because when I had been doing the original planning for the diversion down BC 97 I had assumed the best way was to go through Fort St; John and then Dawson Creek on BC 97 before heading West to Prince George. So I turned on to BC 29 and stopped to see what was the best route to take – going on BC 29 would still bring me on to BC 97 West of Dawson Creek and would save about 20 miles, so I continued on BC 29.
I stopped at a gas station/store in Hudson Hope to gas up and get some lunch. The store was amazing with all sorts of items for sale, but I was disappointed to see that there was nowhere to sit down to eat anything and apparently no kitchen. So, I decided that I would have to make do with a Mars Bar or two, picked them up and went to the cashier’s window to pay.
Just at that moment an Indian woman came past holding what appeared to be a pile of Indian ready meal dishes to be placed in a hot food cabinet. The smell was simply amazing, so I quickly asked her what was in the dishes. “A chicken curry that my mother taught me to cook – I have only just cooked them”. I almost snatched one from her and she even went back to the kitchen to get me some roti to eat with the curry. I returned the Mars Bar to where they had come from, paid for my lunch and then went and sat in the Subie to eat it.
I was raised in London in the UK…. Which means that I was raised on curries of all kinds, my top, top favourites being the hottest possible. This chick curry was particularly hot at all but the combination of spices and sauce made for one of the tastiest, if not the hottest, curries I have had for a while. When I finished, I went back into the store, found the cook and told her how much I had enjoyed it – it made my day.
Shortly after lunch BC 29 crossed the Peace River. I decided to stop and take some stills even though I had only just had a break because I noticed that this river had no ice on it at all, it was completely thawed. You can see this stills in the photo link for the 9th of May – all of them were taken at this Peace River crossing. The view to the East is at the top of this post. It looks as though these images are slightly out of focus, but look carefully and you can see that the air is heavy in particulates from the wild fires in Alberta to the West. I was coughing quite a bit when out of the Subie. Wildfires would flare up in this area in the coming weeks.
I made it to Prince George by 16:45 pm – almost 12 hours after I had set off from Fort Nelson. As tired as I was, once I had checked in I went straight to the business center to see if I could recover my laptop backup disk to a new SSD for the laptop. Once again, the PC was constrained to email, Word, and internet, with just one USB port. I do wish hotels would take the provision of computing facilities in “Business” centers seriously – constraining a PC down this much means there’s a lot of “business” that it can’t be used for. Yes…. safety must be paramount, but with some thought and expertise a PC can be made perfectly safe even when less constrained.
Prevent guests from loading their own apps, for sure, but don’t lock up the physical machine. What’s even more remarkable was that I couldn’t see any form on security app on this machine so it may have been in far more danger from its connection to the web than from me.
On the other hand, this was one of the best guest room layouts I have encountered in a long time. The hotel was a Marriott Courtyard. I have stayed in Marriotts all over the world for the last 35 years, including many Courtyards so I am familiar with the usual room layout. This room had a much larger desk to work on, a larger bed than normal, a large walk-in shower, together with a microwave and fridge neatly tucked away in a cupboard so that the didn’t occupy desk or floor space. You can see stills of the room at IMG_1911/2/3/4. I found a gas station and gassed up as I would be leaving very early in the morning and could not be sure of finding a gas station open.
There was a Subway a few minutes walk from the hotel, so I went and got the same ham/salad sandwich that I had last night and took it back to my room to eat. I watched a little TV to relax and then went to bed early – tomorrow would be the same distance as today, but many more complications and a time pressure to boot.
You can see the stills and videos shot today here.
