Now it’s just putting in the miles…

Dawson Creek, Yukon Territory has some redeeming characteristics.  There are some museums, both art, historic, and geologic.  It seems to retain a small-town character.  Mostly, it has some of the great views that I described of the northern part of the Yukon.  Since we got to drive through it twice, once without keys to the car top carrier and once with, we learned a little bit more about it.  What sneaks onto the scene in Dawson Creek is the petroleum industry.  It is perched on the edge of the vast shale and sand oil fields of Canada and it appears that its economy is also on the periphery of it as well.

Not so Fort Nelson.  I could not drive through it fast enough once we were tempted to camp there.  Fort Nelson is BIG TRUCK land where testosterone and gas fumes feed the populace.  Large loud pick-ups were everywhere and most sported crude copies of male anatomy on their tow hitches if they were not actually towing four-wheelers or motorcycles.  A Ford F-150 would be considered an economy car in Fort Nelson.  There were refineries, oil trucks, logging trucks, a casino with a campground, (considered and immediately rejected) and pretty much everything that we did not see in the northern part of the province.  Unfortunately, after another long day of driving, there did not appear to be any campgrounds nearby to the south, so we had to reluctantly return to find another pet friendly hotel.  We departed quickly after a good breakfast and in short order entered the plains toward Edmonton.

There is little to break up the view as you enter the plains.  “Is that a hawk or a vulture?” was pretty much the conversation starters that we saw.  There were quite a few trains, lots of signs for golf courses, on the very green landscape.  The corn and wheat fields had been harvested so there were many Canadian geese gleaning those fields.  Many of hours of sameness. We headed to a campground we had visited some twenty years before. 

The Vermillion campground had always held a special place in my memory: a kind of oasis in the plains.  It was pretty OK.  Off the highway and through a town, its most remarkable component was another well-dressed Canadian officer of the law; I’ll call him Ranger Richard (Ree-Shard) complete with a fast car, bubble gum machine red and blue lights, and a 70s porn mustache.  He sat in the check in office and observed our entrance to the park without incident.  But the 80+ year old lady, sporting the ‘RevWho’ license plates, with the cat on a leash in the rear windown went the wrong way on a road in the nearly empty campground he appeared behind her with lights flashing!  Upon setting her straight, he spun gravels chasing another vehicle out of the campground for another serious offense.

The 80+ year old woman was in fact, the Rev who her plate referred to.  She was moving cross country with her cat and her pup-tent.  Mocha, the chocolate lab, eyed the cat with more than curiosity.  Later she would insist I take her out in the middle of the night to investigate something, a camping cat perhaps?  Though cold we wandered around to try to get her to calm down.  Upon switching off my flashlight, I was struck by a sky lit by as many stars as I have seen in decades.  What the Great Plains lack by day, their 180 degree view of the night sky more than makes up for it.  A skyway if you will, of white split the darkness, the Milky Way, flanked by constellations as fully formed as I’d ever seen.  There were so many stars that it was difficult to pick out the groupings as I had learned them.  This is another reason that it was time move.  I am literally thrilled by the night sky and though the northern lights occasionally would show up in Sitka, there were not enough nights where I could be entertained by the stars.  Surprisingly, Sitka, on an island on the edge of the Pacific Ocean has a good portion of ambient light that can ruin a good heavenly gaze.  But here at the Vermillion campground, it was on display at the highest level.  Getting chilled, I let Mocha gaze off into the dark one last time before dragging her back into the tent.  I slept in, not even hearing Carol get up with the dogs.