Day 123: Stewart to Smithers and a Fire

August 15, 2014

Today was another nice day.  Mostly sunny and really quite warm.  This afternoon it actually became rather humid.  The first day we have really felt a little too warm in the RV since last summer.

Today was a travel day but didn't go quite as expected.  We sadly left Stewart and the bears about 10:15 this morning.  We took some additional pictures of the Bear Glacier as we drove back to the Cassiar Highway.  It was a really nice drive on amazingly good highway on this southern part of the Cassiar.  The Cassiar intersects with the Yellowhead Highway and we turned east.  At that intersection we stopped to fill with diesel.  It was then that things became a little worrisome.  While in the store paying for gas we were informed that the Yellowhead - Trans-Canada Highway 16 was closed a short distance from just before Houston to Burns Lake.  There is a detour but it is 150 km on a gravel road.  True, we drove a lot further than that on gravel on some of the Alaska roads this summer but this narrow gravel road now has all the east/west traffic for this portion of Canada.  Two sections of the detour are one lane pilot car areas because they are so narrow.  There is no other road we can take.  We can go west on 16 to Prince Rupert and take the ferry down to Vancouver, drive all the way back up the Cassiar Highway, then drive back down the Alaskan Highway (not happening), drive the dirt road or wait for the highway to reopen. The highway is closed due to a 4,000 hectare forest fire.  Earlier today the fire service announced it would be closed for 24-48 hours.  We just received an update about an hour ago, with possible reopening 12-36 hours.  Right now we have decided to wait in Smithers.  We will go to the visitor center to get this quickly posted to the blog because we are then headed to Canadian Tire parking lot to spend the  night.  We will post updates as we can.  Know that we are fine.  We are fully stocked with supplies, fuel and water.  Rumors are that this entire area may be without power and phone due to damage to lines.  There are extremely long lines at the gas stations.  If power and phone are lost we will still be fine.  We have been news deprived since we have been pretty much in the wilderness for so long and we had no idea this fire even existed. We will plan to wait here for another day or 2 and see what happens.  Please pray for rain for this area and for the safety of all the firefighters working this horrible fire.  More later.