This morning we returned to the Dawson Creek visitor center and stopped by the grain elevator next door which has been converted into an art gallery:

A couple blocks away in downtown is the Alaska Highway museum:

They had a nice model of the Kiskatinaw bridge that we crossed yesterday:

The museum was showing the excellent PBS documentary about AlCan, the Alaska Highway:

It’s amazing to think that the Army Corps of Engineers were able to build this road through 1,500 miles of wilderness in less than a year.

Outside stood the official Mile 0 obelisk, where it all began:

Driving South, we passed through the town of Pouce Coupe and continued on towards Grande Prairie, crossing into Alberta and Mountain Time on the way.  This area is known for it’s canola production, its flowers creating vibrant tracts of bright yellow along the highway:

Suddenly we find that we’ve moved from mountainous bear country into the Canadian equivalent of Wisconsin:

Our Alaska adventure was amazing.  It was a ton of driving, much of it over unpaved and awful roads.  But I’ll never forget the fireweed along the highways, the unending expanse of black spruce over permafrost, the soggy and desolate tundra, the chill of the Arctic Ocean, the blue glaciers spilling down impossibly steep and rugged mountains into the ocean, the bears, the moose, the caribou, and going to sleep beneath the midnight sun.

Tonight, we’re dispersed camping along the Bighorn Highway between Grande Prairie and Grande Cache.  Most of our neighbors live here all summer, leaving each morning to go work at the nearby oil and natural gas fields.

Good Shabbos from the Bighorn Highway!  See our trip map for today’s drive.