Coal River British Columbia to Fort Nelson British Columbia 226 miles
The skies are cloudy again but not as low. Hopefully we won’t have as much rain. Rob discovered last night that our Idaho license plates were in trouble. One lost a bolt and the other was bent. We had breakfast in the little cafe. We were the first customers of the day. They bake all the bread and cinnamon rolls. Last night the rolls were all gone but this morning they had more. They looked so good we bought two to enjoy later. Rob goes out to change the oil since its not raining. He puts on coveralls and lots of bug spray. Everyone gets attacked when they go out. We bought oil from the gas station so that worked out. After about an hour Connie got concerned so went out to check on Rob. Some of the staff said he was working on it. Undoubtedly he got interrupted numerous times. He was ready to go soon. Unfortunately Woodie was not. Several guys came over and pushed it to get it started. Then we were on the road again. One of the staff members has a medium sized dog that she says treed a black bear the evening before. We saw bison along the road. Did you know there are two species of bison in North America? Well these are wood bison while the ones in Yellowstone are plains bison. The plains bison are larger and lighter color. We saw lots of signs for different wild life but didn’t see anything else. We crossed a couple more of the mesh bridges. Yesterday and today we see a different evergreen tree. It is tall and very skinny. The branches are much shorter and the needles are much darker. From a distance they look black. We encountered two stretches of construction with pilot cars. We see glimpses of lakes and rivers between the trees. Some of the streams are a grayish green. Perhaps glacier water. For a couple of miles we followed along the edge of Muncho Lake. The water was like a mirror reflecting the surrounding mountains. More bicyclists are on the road. Usually solo riders. The motorcycle riders are dressed in heavy clothing. They look like a dark Pillsbury Dough Boy. Another unique road sign is the small red rectangles set on point that say slow. They are very low to the ground and are usually followed by some rough road. We crossed another bridge that had so many orange marked pot holes that they must have run out of orange paint and used red. The price of gas today was the highest yet at $7.02 and $7.32 per gallon in US dollars. The road went up and down a lot again today. We really slowed down on some of them. Luckily not much traffic so vehicles can get around us. Near the end of the drive we came into a large valley. A few hay fields with big round bales were on both sides of the road. A few miles out of Fort Nelson Woodie started running rough. When we slowed down to park at the hotel it actually died and we coasted into the parking spot. After supper Rob worked on Woodie. Seems to have been the carburetor. It was nice to have a road tested spare along.
Spoffords Travel 