Suzanne tells us that Grandson Nathan's favorite robot says, it's time to "roll out" and that's what we feel like we are doing - rolling out to Alaska. We left Jasper National Park this morning and turned left - north. The road to Grande Prairie, Alberta, where we are staying overnight tonight was 250 miles and it could be neatly divided in half, with Grande Cache (pronounced "cash", not "cash - a" as we originally pronounced it).
The first section was just as we expected, lots of pine trees and few people.
There were a number of Provincial Parks along the way and...
warnings about wildlife on the roads.
There also seemed to be lots of logging.
Despite the rain, it was a beautiful drive. Not spectacular, because there weren't mountain peaks, but beautiful.
Then we reached Grande Cache and everything changed, beginning with the hillsides being scared by mining - in this case, coal.
There was a huge, coal-fired power generating plant at the base of the hill with...
a humongous pipe that carried a slurry of coal from the mine to the plant.
The last half of the drive, from Grande Cache to Grande Prairie was one mining, oil drilling station or natural gas fracking operation after another. The road was under construction too, and even on Sunday there was work going on to make it four lanes and convoys of semis traveling the road. We chose to ignore the industrialization and focused on the beauty of the north woods.
There were my favorites, aspen forests and
more aspen forests.
Lots of logging piles waiting for the trucks but,...
there was also lupine in bloom.
Late this afternoon we arrived in Grande Prairie, and turned left -west, to Alaska.
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