September 15, Liard Hot Spring to Dawson Creek
A sharp breeze blew at 6:15 am as we walked the boardwalk over the misty marsh and into the woods to Liard Hot Spring “Alpha Pool.” (“Beta” was closed because of bear activity.) What a way to start the day in the 106+ degree hot water! Les and I had the pool to ourselves and then walked back to our camper for an egg and vegetable breakfast, our only real meal today. We drove all day and listened to an entire cowboy detective story. We stopped to see hoodoos – plugs of rock sticking up in the landscape, and it was snowing. We saw the cow and calf bison herd, caribou licking the gravel by the road, deer, and a cunning little red fox with a big black-tipped tail.

September 16, 2010
Sun setting red orange, and we are still driving south toward Red Deer, Alberta. We left Dawson Creek by 8 am, and stopped at a funky pub in Valleyview for lunch. The walls were hung with beer flags, iron skillets, wool carding and other tools, signs & sayings (for instance “Complaint Department: push this button” with a mousetrap attached). Nutcrackers lined one high shelf and a teapot collection was arranged on shelves in the windows. When we left out of that town a different way than we entered, Tagish Charlie made a run for the North, and we noticed after losing an hour and a half heading toward Peace River! Ugg, the navigator found it very hard to laugh. So, here we go down Queen’s highway 2, bound for the USA tomorrow.

September 17, 2010
This morning we woke up at Mitchner Provincial Campground in Lacombe, Alberta. There was a heavy frost. The caretakers live in a trailer, and on the porch it says, “Two old crows live here!” Actually, they both look rather like crows. In the night when we arrived, we passed the man bundled up walking down the road, looking like a fat raven with his feathers ruffled. The lady had black hair and looked rather intelligent like a crow. Maybe they were Crow Indians?
Today was a day of hawks. We must have seen two-dozen, sitting individually on fence posts, looking out into fields. Occasionally a hawk was staring at us as we drove by. Today was a day of snow – snow in Alberta, snow in Montana – and we thought we were going south!
It’s getting dark. We stopped at the First Peoples’ Buffalo Jump State Park near Ulm, MT, but it was closed. Walking up the path, we could see teepees and a long cliff where the Indians herded the bison to stampede, fall over, and die. Meadowlarks were singing to the cold evening.