Day 14 - The Trees

We woke early and were on the road by 9:30 (that would be a holiday "early", then). I had estimated 7-8 hours for the journey to Peace River, hoping to arrive about 5pm.

We encountered several more of those car gaggles (an elk, some goats, some deer), before leaving the Jasper National Park. We were following Highway 16 east, which, had we continued to follow it, would have taken us to Edmonton. Instead, just before Hinton, we turned left onto Highway 40, the Big Horn Highway.

The landscape slowly changed as we left the Rockies behind. Trees began to appear, great forests of pine stretching as far as the eye could see. The road was quiet, but not as quiet as I was expecting. It's a logging route, and there were a number of industrial lorries, as well as touring motorcycles, the ubiquitous trucks, and tourists, like us. The road was for the most part a basic two-lane highway, with a wide hard shoulder, and clear grass areas before the treeline (this may have been deliberate, to help visibility for drivers with wildlife crossing the road - nevertheless we saw a number of dead deer/elk/moose?? either by the side of the road, or in one instance right in the middle of the road).

We arrived at Grande Cache, really not much more than a wide place in the road, and filled up with fuel (as well as emptying out with, well, what you need to empty out with after two hours on the road). Grande Cache is so named because a French trapper stored his "big cache" of pelts there. Simple as that.

Sandra took over the driving at this point, and took us to the next town, Grande Prairie. While most of the places in this area came into existence as trading posts, Grande Prairie was a town that developed because of the grasslands around it that were needed to grow grain to support the surrounding trading posts. We reached Grande Prairie after driving for 3 hours through the most immense forest (and this is only part of the enormous boreal forest land that covers northern British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba). What on earth possessed the original European settlers in this country to traipse through that entire wilderness to get to this prairie, I can't imagine. I'm not ashamed to admit it, I would have let someone else tame this country.

We ate lunch in the parking lot of the Grande Prairie visitor centre, opposite the biggest sundial in the world, before continuing our journey on to Peace River. The landscape changed again, the trees fading into the background, and field upon field of yellow rapeseed filling the foreground. With no trees to hide the horizon, you are again reminded that you are in the prairies, even this far north, with the road stretching endlessly out before you in a straight line that makes your eyes hurt.

And then, with Sandra just stirring from sleep in the passenger seat beside me, something amazing happened. The ground folded away like creases in a quilt, and we came upon Dunvegan. A bridge here crosses the Peace River, and so it was that we caught our first glimpse of that mighty river. They estimate that 85% of the fresh water in Alberta is contained in the Peace River. It's huge, originating in the Rockies in BC, and draining into Slave River over a thousand miles later.

But we still weren't at our destination. It's over 60 miles from Dunvegan to the town of Peace River.

Those last 60 miles were quite tiring. We'd been driving for about 6 hours, the landscape was flat and uninspiring for the most part, and we just wanted to get to our hotel.

Peace River, heading east from Highway 2, is reached down a long, slow slope. The road is very wide, and you start to see signs of civilisation, a welcome relief after miles of fields. Car dealerships, truck dealerships, the new Walmart, the Golden Arches (is nowhere sacred?), and then finally, and at long last, that bridge I've seen so many pictures of, and looked at on Google Maps. It's ENORMOUS! I never realised how big it would be. But then the river is so wide at this point.

The town isn't very big, but we still managed to get lost once before we found our hotel. It was a relief to check in, and also to find out that the PeaceFest tickets I'd booked a few weeks previously were there waiting for us.

After checking out the room (it's pretty decent, nice flatscreen TV), we dragged our weary bodies down to 12 Foot Davis Ball Park, got searched more thoroughly than we were at the airport when we flew out here, spread out on the blanket that we'd "borrowed" from the hotel (sorry, Sawridge), and, well, I promptly fell asleep.

First act on was Shane Yellowbird. Who? Country and Western newbie. Decent enough performer, but really not my style of music. Second up, Kim Mitchell. Now this band did rock, but by now fatigue was setting in. It was 10:30 pm, getting cold, and basically we were done in. We made our way back, put the "do not disturb" sign on the door, and once I've finished typing these last few words, I'm going to bed.

Tomorrow we'll explore Peace River a little. And not do a lot of driving.