Pulled out of Fort Nelson around 8:30 hoping to complete the 525 miles to Whitehorse today. A fallback would be a smaller town, Watson Lake, also in the Yukon, but only 300 miles or so. We are way ahead of schedule and have the time.

Spoiler alert: We only made it to Watson Lake.

We are still in the Rockies but not with the spectacular mountain views of the Banff National Park or the endless green vistas seen along the Peace River. The roads above Fort Nelson most resemble travel in far northern NH, a seemingly endless strip of two lane blacktop winding through a dense forest with the occasional tree covered mountain top in the distance. There’s a pleasant sameness as we go along, but the urge to reach for my camera has become less frequent.

New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain has moved to British Columbia to avail himself of National Health Care.

The scenery improved as we drove north and some more impressive mountains came into view.

Then we saw a moose!

And a buffalo!

A whole herd of buffalos!

And the crowning touch, a bear.

A pretty good day of wildlife sightings. This brings our total to one bear, six buffalo, six moose and a deer.

In other news, we visited something called the Whirlpool Canyon which is where uprooted trees go to when the river floods.

We then arrived in Watson Lake about 3:30 pm, and after some deep research, we chose Andrea’s Hotel because every room has it’s own bathroom.

This…attraction I guess you’d call it, has signs from all over the world. I walked around town and this was literally the only thing I found worth photographing. This town is all oilfield services, all the time. Aesthetics are secondary to profitability. This is the first real frontier town we’ve encountered.

Watson Lake, YT – 4,377 miles behind us.