Day 5 – First windshield crack!
November 7th, 2008 Posted in 2008 Alaska trip2008-06-18, Wednesday
Hinton, AB (09:11 MST) to Kiskatinaw Provincial Park (near Dawson Creek, BC)
We are 1500 miles away from home!
The proper title for this entry should have been “Alaska Highway, the beginning” or something like that, since this is the day we arrived Dawson Creek, BC (“Mile 0″).
We left KOA in the morning after turning in the survey in exchange for a deck of poker card. We waved at the driver of the yellow FJ who lives near the campground, looks like he’s on his way to work!
Our drive today will take us thru Highway 40 just outside Hinton – “the scenic route to Alaska” to Grand Prairie and then to Dawson Creek, BC, the beginning of the Alaska Highway.
The road is pretty empty and on both side it’s mostly planned forest.
At Grand Cache we stopped at the visitor center for and quick break and head to Sulphur Gates. It’s a pretty cool spot where the two rivers – Sulphur river and Smoky river meet. It’s a short walk (10-20 minutes maybe) to the top with a scenic platform overlooking the rivers. For some reason I had too much caffeine this morning and I was feeling a bit jumpy.
After the brief visit to Sulphur Gates we continue our drive towards Grand Prairie. The road is actually pretty good as it is mostly smooth. The posted speed limit is 90km and we were doing about that speed for the most part until we came to the part with the posted “loose chip” sign and slowed down a bit. Then at an uphill curve a semi on the opposite direction (downhill) coming down really fast and threw a rock at us. We heard a loud BANG and thought this would be a body damage. We examined the “damage” afterward and found a large crack on the windshield, maybe about 2″ in diameter. This marks the FIRST windshield crack we get on the FJ! It’s actually not bad as it looked since I keep reading about how easy the FJ windshield can chip and it never happened to us- not when offroading in Death Valley, not when driving to work, but day 5 of our trip to Alaska!
Of course they also said Alaska Highway eats windshield, but we are not even there yet!
We arrived Grand Prairie around noon and stopped at a Burger King to get some lunch while David called USAA to see what (if anything) they can do about the windshield. We thought we should do something about it as soon as possible since it’s a pretty large crack and we barely started the trip! The folks at USAA/Safelite wants to know if the crack can be covered by a one dollar bill and we were both very confused. How do you determine if a round crack can be covered by a rectangular shape? They decided they want to replace the windshield and wanted to know the zipcode of our location. Uh.. OK. They dont have zipcode in Canada, they have postal code, and guess what, it’s not 5 numbers either. We finally realized we are not going to get anything done as long as we are still in Canada (since Safelite has no Canadian location) so we took the claim number and told them we will call when we get back to the US (either in Alaska or back home in California). I called dad to tell him about the windshield as well. the city of Grand Prairie looks like a typical city with everything, shopping mall, auto dealer and lots of traffic! Oh yeah they have a Costco here too. From here we will head west towards Dawson Creek, BC.
We passed Beaverlodge which has a giant beaver displayed along the road. According to Milepost this is the home to Canada’s most northerly Agricultural Research Station and also the regional center for grain transportation, seed cleaning and production. We didnt care much about all this so we didnt stop to check out anything. This whole area is pretty flat and contains mostly farmlands. It reminded me of the vast lands in the midwest. At the Alberta and British Columbia border there’s a sign reminding people about time zone change. We are now back to Pacific time zone.
We arrived at Dawson Creek late afternoon and went to Safeway to pick up some supplies. They do not have the “Mission Tortilla” we are used to getting so we have to settle for a random brand. We also picked up some ribeye steak to be used for grilling later. After figuring out which phone number to use at check out for the Safeway preferred card discount we went to fill up at the Safeway gas station. Somewhere the program used to track people’s purchasing habit at Safeway will get very confused that my sister who lives in Milpitas shopped at Dawson Creek, BC. Next stop is “Mile 0″ of the Alaska Highway, which is just around the corner.
At Dawson Creek Rail museum they have some railroad equipments displayed, we didnt get many pictures for that however. It’s also a visitor center where one can pick up tour and trip information for places nearby and along the Alaska Highway. We signed the guest book and bought some postcards and head outside to get some “Mile 0″ photo.
Of course it was not until later in the trip we realized the “Mile 0″ sign by the museum is not the only Alaska Highway tourist attraction in Dawson Creek, there’s also another “Mile 0″ post that we somehow did not visit (it was a block away from the visitor center). Oh well, there’s always next time right?
Our stop for the day is Kiskatinaw Provincial Park, it’s a campground under the BC park system. There are some 24 sites to pick and some are right next to the river. We weren’t really sure about the mosquito situation so we end up picking a site that is further away from the water but closer to the outhouses.
This is the first time we used the pop-up shade in this trip. After we setup camp we marinaded the steak and start preparing for dinner. It was not long after I started to boil some water for tea David noticed the heat from the burner is destroying the net wall. OOPS! I patched it up with some (purple) duct tape so bugs cant come in through the hole.
We had salad, steak and potato (in dutch oven) for dinner. This is a good meal. Unfortunately we were both pretty hungry so there is no picture of what the cooked meal looks like.
We went for a short walk after dinner to check out the creek nearby. The bridge in the picture is the Kiskatinaw bridge which we will be driving on tomorrow morning. This is part of the old Alaska highway and the only wooden curved bridge that are still in use. After we got back to the camp the campground host came by to collect camping fee (CAN $15) and chatted with us a bit.
Distance today: 312.1 miles
FJ spotted: SF x1, BC x1, Ti x1
Wildlife spotted: deer/elk x2