Alaska 2015 - Day 57 - Houston BC - Purden Lake CG, BC

Day 57 – 7-7-15 Tuesday The temperature when we got up was 61 degrees. That was about our normal high temperature in Alaska. We departed about 8:45AM. We continued to travel through areas with large fields of hay and several very large wood mills. Most of the trucks on the road were either hauling logs or finished lumber. Most of the log trucks had three stacks of logs unlike what we see back home of either two stacks or one long stack. We had noticed most of the big rig trucks in Canada and Alaska pull tandem trailers. We saw a few more cows and horses but never did see any large herds of cattle. Maybe this area provides hay to farms/ranches that don't have the open land to grow hay.

Square Hay Bales

Fresh Cut Lumber

Moose warning sign

We followed one very long lake that paralleled the road for miles in the Burns Lake area. Just outside of Prince George we stopped to fuel up. We had not fueled up since leaving Steward/Hyder and the motor home was getting thirsty. I had noticed Lena was showing symptoms of “Wal-Mart Withdrawal” so we stopped at Wal-Mart in Price George to restock the cupboards. We managed to get our shopping done and get out of town before rush hour. You have to drive right through the town on the Yellowhead Highway. Prince George is not a huge town. I think the population is over 80,000 but it is the capital of British Columbia so it has a fair amount of traffic.

We drove about 40 more miles and pulled into the Purden Lake Provincial Park Campground for the night and set up in site 29. No hookups but lots of tall spruce trees for shade so we should be comfortable tonight without any air conditioning tonight. A couple of birds flew down near us when we were sitting in our outside chairs. They walked to within a few feet of us. They look like a cross between a blue jay and a black bird. The back half is blue and the front half is black and they have little with spots over their eyes. We saw the same bird at the last provincial park we stayed in and at that park the bird tried to steal some of the sausage I was getting ready to cook over the fire.

We purchased the items at Wal-Mart that we wanted to cook over the fire tonight here in this park but we can't have a campfire due to the extremely dry weather. There is a fire ban in place.