Alberta and beyond . . .Saskatchewan

We stayed at a RV Camp between Summit Lake and Prince George. In a conversation with the owner, he told me that they could stay open because they wrap their water lines with heat tape. They get up to ten feet of snow and -40 temperatures in the winter. Pretty amazing that people will camp in that but there are a lot of winter activities; including cross-country skiing, downhill skiing, snow machining, hunting, fishing, etc. that keep people moving. We did see several elk and a few fox going through the canyons.

We left Prince George with a goal of getting at least to Edmonton by evening.  We took the Yellowhead Highway from Prince George.  Our troubles began as we made our first pit stop at a BC rest area.  First, we had to cross a two lane highway as it was on the left side of the road.  Then it was a VERY narrow road down a steep and winding hill.  About 400 feet down the hill, there it was!  A sign that read “Narrow road – NO turnaround”.  I am driving a 40 foot coach with 21 feet of truck attached.  Oops, we are right at 65 feet long and no turn around?  Well, Cathy and I have been in this situation before, we just unhooked the truck, jocky the coach around on the narrow road, one side uphill and the other side drops into a river.  Once I got the coach turned around, Cathy met me at the top of the hill and we reconnected.  I made a left turn to continue but, because of the angle of the intersection, was completely across four lanes of traffic and could not make the turn without going over the ledge on the other side of the highway.  CRAP.  I backed up, about 30 feet (you are not supposed to back up with a car in tow) and finally was able to continue in the wrong direction.  About five miles later we were able to find a spot wide enough for us to reverse direction and continue.  Now it gets better . . . We made sure the next rest stop did not have a “No turnaround sign before heading down to the river. At he bottom, there was no room to turn around.  Twice in a row!!  We unhooked, made the turn and went back up the hill to re-connect.  This time we crossed the interstate before making the final connections to avoid possibly blocking four lanes of travel.

We took the Yellowhead Highway route back (instead of the Alcan) specifically to see Mt. Robson.  Unfortunately, it clouded up in the morning and we could only see the base of the mountain so we continued on to the town of Jasper for a late lunch at the Jasper Brewery.  We had to wait about a half hour for the tracks to clear (trains going in both directions) to park, then we walked to the town.  By now it was snowing on the mountains around us.

It was getting dark, snowing at the higher elevations so we decided to head to Hinton to spend the night. We passed multiple herds of Elk that had come down from the higher elevations for the winter.  They were grazing alongside the highway.  We pulled into the same RV park we stayed at several months earlier and spent the night. There was no water available this time as they had cleared the lines for winter.

We left Hinton, through Edmonton, wow, the traffic, even on a Saturday afternoon! We had almost forgotten what traffic was. We saw Bullwinkle jogging beside the highway east of Edmonton, refueled in Lloydminster, SK then continued until midnight, stopping just before Saskatoon. It was very dark and we could not find a place to pull over. Most of the side roads were single lane gravel, apparently going to individual gas/oil wellhead. We will wait until morning to see what we were missing.

Sorry for the lack of photos, we were fast tracking this section to avoid weather and travelling late into the evening.