Dawson Creek, British Columbia was the home of our first campground in BC after leaving Jasper National Park. We arrived on Friday, June 30 to a warm sunny summer’s day. Much different from the previous weeks of supposed summer. Dawson Creek, BC latitude is just over 1500 km north of our home town’s latitude in Ontario and we finally hit 27C temps. The further north on Hwy 40 from Jasper we drove the less mountains we saw. By the time we drove through Grande Prairie, Alberta we were in a large prairie landscape. We expected mountains, rugged landscape, and numerous steep grades along our way not rolling farmlands that resembled southern Alberta. The city is aptly named and looks larger than its 60,000+ population. There are all the large sized box stores and malls you would expect in major centres to the south. We stopped off here to see if we could pickup an extra spare tire for the trailer in case we need it further north, but no luck.
Turning west on to Hwy 43 took us into BC and upon crossing the BC border we had to stop in a mandatory Zebra Mussel inspection station in order to be able to put our kayaks into BC’s waters. Hwy 43 changed to Hwy 2 and from there it was another 40 minutes to our campsite in Mile 0 RV Park on the west side of town. The park took its name from the fact Dawson Creek is the start (Mile 0) of the Alaska Highway. The campground is nicely located just off the main road (Hwy 2) thru town. Dawson Creek seems to be spread along both sides of the main road so everything is easy to access and find. The campground is large, has full service hookups, as well as laundry facilities. Our campsite seemed to be the best there mainly because we booked it in January. We had lots of grass and trees on our entry door side. Many of the other sites had a narrow strip of grass, barely wide enough for the supplied picnic table, between parking pads. Our slide took up most of our neighbour’s grass strip. A couple of days here would be max if you didn’t get a good site.
We stayed 3 nights over the July 1st weekend and took part in the Canada Day celebration held in the Dawson Creek Pioneer Village. It is a great museum of restored and saved history. Plenty of buildings, equipment, and smaller artifacts all moved to this location. The town Mayor was on hand to open a time capsule sealed on July 1, 1967. Newspaper, business advertisements, 1967 coins, photos, and most interesting of all – several capsules of seeds from local farmers. No GMO stuff in them. The plan is to select some of the items to go back into the next time capsule that will be opened in 2067. Best of it was the gentleman present today who was an employee of the town in 1967 and present when they sealed the financial statements of the town in the capsule. Volunteer BBQ, beautiful gardens, and many old buildings and artifacts from Dawson Creek’s history filled the afternoon.