Mile 0

June 4th

Left Pocahontas, and the boat inspection university gal raved us on for breakfast, to The Old Grind in the nearby town, Hinton, which was okay food, but a cozy community gathering coffeehouse gift shop, with all ages served that morning, including three generations of grandmothers, daughters and grand-babes.

We then spent about 3 hours in Grand Prairie looking for a converter/module for the trailer

lights, and left exhausted, but grateful to find the part. Rewarded ourselves with dinner at Tony Roma's.

Hooray! We made it to the "0" mile marker, the start of the Alaska Highway, in Dawson Creek!!!

I was driving "M," getting used to down-shifting when needed again, and Mark and I were singing to the Eagles, when we got there, and he starts getting all excited, directing me to circle around totally, the roundabout in that town, and now I am confused, turned the music off. He got me to the quiet town center, to that "0" mile monolith marker, and we parked our big 'ol "M" right alongside the right-angled parking lines, and Mark choreographed me to stand at that tribute, where I jumped up and down, yaying for his photo shoot. Frozen yogurt at a fun, funny Menchies, was our celebration and reward for getting to the infamous highway, built in one year, amazingly, 1942-1943, by the American military engineers and Canadian like, in order to prevent the Japanese, who had just bombed Pearl Harbor, from taking the Alaska Aleutian Islands. Knowing this feat, makes us appreciate the tenacity, the motivated duty to protect our North Americans, that these soldiers and civilians succeeded in creating in so brief a period. It is mind-boggling.

That night, we camped at Kiskatawni, above the river and campers playing guitar, walked down to the oldest and only wooden bridge left, constructed by the Al-Can engineers, in l942-l943, and slumbered.