May 20, On to Dawson Creek via Chetwynd

The morning brought rain.  Time to dig out the rain pants.  By the time we arrived in Chetwynd it was raining pretty hard and it was cold.  Our first stop was at the visitor center to confirm that there  was a sani dump and water fill up. Also we wanted  to get information on the chain saw carvings. The town is noted for the world chain saw championship competition. .  The sani dump was easy to find and very convenient, although big rigs would need to use the school turn out across from the dump vs going up the street to turn around as suggested by the person at the visitor center.  There is ample parking across the street from the visitor center for day use if you want to walk around town and see all of the carvings.

These are a few of my favorites.  The detail is unbelievable.  A chainsaw did all of these?

This was a bench.  I was tempted to try it out, but there was a huge pool of cold rain water on the seat.

This is a guy panning gold and a salmon is jumping up out of the water.  What you don't see is there is a bear behind the gold panner ready to strike at the fish.  It was pretty impressive.

Normally we would have walked around the town to see all of the sculptures but the cold, freezing rain, dictated we take Liz's car and park closer to the downtown area.  We discovered Artisians were from as far as Japan and Africa.  I would love to see the competition which us held every year in early June.  The town is just waking up from winter and not quite ready for visitors yet.  We were told that the weather had been really nice until yesterday.  Where have we heard that before.  Had the weather been nicer we would have spent more time in the town, but it was time to continue up to Dawson Creek, Mile 0 of the AlCan.

This is the official Mile 0.  There is another one a few blocks away in the center of town.

We arrived at the visitor center and found out contrary to our information there was no wifi but we could get it at the Alaska House.  It was still pouring down rain and getting colder. We hurried down to the Alaska House and yes there was wifi but we couldn't get it to work...probably the weather.  We watched a very interesting and informative movie on the building of the AlCan highway.  The Army Corps of Engineers was challenged to build the highway after the invasion of Pearl Harbor.  There was concern the Japanese might attack  the Aleutian Islands only about 750 miles away and the highway would provide defense support.

Since wifi wasn't working at the Alaska House we decided to go to the library.  Success!..sort of. I was able to check bank and credit card balances but could not get into my blog or any blogs.  Also, I was trying to research BC and Yukon boondocking campsites and those sites were blocked.  I guess the filter gods didn't like the terms "dry camping" or  "boondocking".

We headed for "Uncle Sam's" on the out skirts of town for the night and our plans were to catch the museum tomorrow and take pictures of the the 0 Mile Posts and then continue north.  It was raining a very cold rain by the time we got back.  Total mileage for the day was 112 mileage.  We sure saw a lot in those few short miles.