Day Twenty Eight: Fort Nelson

Before I forget, there were some very pretty flowers at the Pioneer village in Dawson Creek.  I just didn’t put them in the previous post for some reason.  Oops.

Anyway, we had to drive from Dawson Creek to Fort Nelson on the Alaska Highway.  About mile 70 or so, there was a restaurant named the Shepherd’s Inn that Mo and Sally highly recommended as a breakfast stop.  Jerry, Wendy and I left around 9am and were definitely hungry by the time we got there.  The little restaurant was full of our group already.  Sally had called them the night before to tell them how many would be coming in, just to give them a head’s up.  I’m sure they appreciated the warning.

I had blueberry pancakes and sausage.  It was a quite delicious meal.  However, I was fascinated by what the restaurant had out on the table.  Their condiments for meals.  Canadians have some strange tastes, that’s for sure.

After I got set up at Fort Nelson, I realized I’d made a big boo boo.  Our next night would be spent at Liard Hot Springs, and it’s a place with no stores, no cell service and no electricity supplied from a grid: they have giant CAT generators that they run to supply the campground.  The night after that would be in Watson Lake, also a small place with little around.  Sally and Mo had declared we’d have a “heavy appi” night, where everyone brought an appetizer and we’d have an evening meal together.  But, to make anything I needed groceries.  There had been a Walmart and other grocery stores in Dawson Creek, but I was too busy doing museums and never went.  Bad idea.  A quick consult of my Google maps showed there was an IGA in Fort Nelson, so off I went.

I was going to make homemade pico de gallo and use that as part of chicken and turkey pinwheels.  I needed the stuff for pico, tortilla shells and the meat.  My first big challenge was the tiny deli section.  The lady needed to know how many grams of each meat I wanted.  I quickly did some conversions…with my calculator.  You know I don’t do math.  And got 300 grams each, which was perfect.

Next, I grabbed the stuff for the pico.  I was really, really lucky they had cilantro available.  I had to buy 6 jalapeños as there was no option other than a pre-selected amount.  And they had 2 bottles of lime juice, but they had it.  They actually had an amazing assortment of tortillas.  Not sure why, but it was better than the selection at home!

But again, I was struck by the fact that Canadian tastes and American tastes are definitely a bit different.

The campground was pretty cute, though there was no Wifi again.  Dawson Creek hadn’t any either, and Liard obviously wasn’t going to.  Sigh.

This was the start of several back to back travel days.  But, it wasn’t snowing.  So, all in all, not bad.