Day 28: More travel and Whitecourt Forestry Interpretive Centre

May 12, 2014

After a good night's sleep and feeling refreshed we left Spruce Grove en route for Grand Prairie, Alberta. Before we left we needed to check e-mail, etc. so just down from where we were staying was Tim Horton's. They have excellent coffee and great free WIFI. What better way to start the day? Oh, they also have good sausage, egg and cheese biscuits and doughnuts. We intentionally lost weight before we started this trip just for days like this.

It was another blue sky, sunny day. The morning temperature was 35 but it quickly warmed up. At 8:28 this morning we came to our first Alaska Highway History sign at a pullout on Alberta Highway 43. Exciting! We are not yet on the Alaska Highway, previously know as the AlCan Highway but we are getting closer as evidenced by this sign.

We then came to the Rochfort Bridge train trestle. It is the second longest wooden train trestle in the world, so we had to stop for pictures. Couldn't get the entire trestle in one picture! It is 2,414 feet long and was originally build in 1914 and yes it is still in use.

We saw no moose today, but we did see moose signs.

We also ran into a few more suicidal bugs as you can tell from the windshield

We were traveling through some great moose habitat, based on our previous sightings, but today we saw no moose. Oh well – we still have many miles to go and we are sure we will see some soon.

When you get too far north satellite radios cannot receive directly from the satellites so the company trucks in the music in these tanks for their customers.

By the time we reached Whitecourt we noticed that we were back in the trees rather than the plains. Whitecourt is the Snowmobile Capital of Alberta. They have miles and miles of snowmobile trails. We stopped at the Whitecourt and District Forest Interpretive Centre. They had some really neat equipment and old structures outside. Thought of our forester friend today when we looked at the various forestry equipment. There was a great museum with details of how they use every part of the trees to make different products. There were also various antiques from the pioneer days of Alberta. Very well done!

Scout liked the fact there were great trails beginning at the Interpretive Center. We have traveled a lot since leaving Storm Mountain and really hadn't taken time to hike much – not that the weather was very good for hiking anyway – so today we hiked. It was so nice to be back out in nature. You could smell the pines and listen to the birds. So nice! There were precautionary signs for possible bears, mountain lions and coyotes but all we saw were four ravens fighting.

We never see this sign on trails at home, but we obeyed.

We noticed today that the trees and other plants here – much further north, have budded out more than those back further south in Great Falls, MT and extreme southern Alberta.

We also found out today that some very special young people back home are praying for our safety as we travel. We so very much appreciate your prayers! We hope you will continue to pray for us and follow along with us on this wonderful journey to Alaska. Get you Dad to let us know if you have any questions or if there is anything special you want us to take a picture of - especially for you. 

We are having problems staying up too late and then sleeping too late in the mornings.  Very unlike us.  But, last night as we were working on the blog at 10:00 pm it was just dusky dark.  We remember on our last rip to Alaska coming out from dinner after 9:30 and needing sun glasses.  Well it is currently 9:30 pm in Grande Prairie and the sun is just now setting.  

We are only about 80 miles from Dawson City, the beginning for the Alaska Highway. We plan to spend tomorrow visiting all the sights there. Please continue to let us hear from you!