Saturday, August 1, 2015

Peace River to Testa River Lodge

Away early today, 6 am MDT, 12C sunny. Seemed a very quiet night in spite of nearby traffic. We stopped for a full breakfast today at a rustic looking place in Sasquatch Crossing. It was good, but not enough competition around to keep the price down. $$. Lucky Cathie was treating today! 

We picked up an hour between Ft St John and Ft Nelson due to the change to PDT (Pacific Daylight).

About 65km south of Ft Nelson we saw our first fire damage, though the fire was no longer active. 


We also saw a couple of Sandhill cranes browsing by the hwy, and passed a long spread-out group of cyclists. Seeing the cyclists on this trip makes me regret even less that I never tried to cycle across Canada!


Ft Nelson is touted as sort of a jumping-off point, as the road gets a lot emptier further on. So we had a good stop, used a laundry at a very reasonable price ($2 wash, $1 dry), got groceries and fuel. We thought about staying at a cg in town, but it was just after noon, and we really didn’t like the feel of Ft Nelson. It seems like it could be a really rough place, after dark especially. 

Cath made some lunch while we were stopped, then we ate as we went on down the road. There was a long rough dusty stretch of construction just out of Ft Nelson. There were also some wonderful mountain and valley views to compensate, made more visible by slow speeds through the construction.

We got to a rustic cg with a grand name, Testa River Lodge, about 2:30 and decided to stop for the night. $25 for a site with electric. We later moved over to a different site that we liked better. The electric connection for the first site was via an extension cord running to our site right across the main cg road! 

We got an electric site because there had been a lot of rain here lately, and the non-electric sites seemed to be in a bit of a swamp. Once their diesel generator shut down at 10 pm, no more electricity anyway.

No cell service and their free wifi wasn’t working. We made tea to go with one of their world-famous cinnamon buns, $5 for one, plenty big enough to share.

Sign at the Testa River Lodge gas pump, where regular gas was available at “only” $1.59/ltr:

Today's route:



 

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