Evening reflection, stream leaving Summit Lake
We travelled more today than yesterday, but it was still not a very long travel day. This morning we stopped in Fort Nelson at around 11:00 am to get fuel and some groceries. We were looking for two things: somewhere to get drinking water, and somewhere to get connected to the Internet. We asked about water at the IGA, and the clerk gave us the wrong information, sending us in the direction of the post office. That was the wrong way, and we eventually found that there was water at the museum, and that was in the direction of the library. Fort Nelson is not a very big town, so it didn’t take long to find that. However, when we got there, it was closed until noon. Two little boys sitting waiting in front told us “just 15 minutes until it opens” and one of them confirmed that, “yes, there was wireless Internet there.”
So we headed to the museum, about two blocks away and got our drinking water there at the trailer disposal site. We also took the time to eat our lunch at a picnic table at the museum, before heading back to the library to post yesterday’s blog, and also check our email.
You could see large storm clouds building up over the Rocky Mountains as we headed west from town. It began to rain just as we hit road construction. This was good as the road under construction was very dusty, and the rain settled that. We had one delay of about ten minutes while we waited for a pilot vehicle who escorted us through several kilometres of construction. Because of the construction, our Yukon is pretty dirty tonight.
We stopped at Summit Lake campground about 2:30 pm. It is quite a bare site, at the elevation of 1285 m, which this far north is almost at the tree line. There are only small willows here, so we set up the kitchen shelter (it needed to be dried out anyway, as it was quite damp from last night’s dew) as there are no trees to use with the tarp, and then went for a hike up the Ridge Trail behind our campsite. It began to rain just as we reached the top of the ridge. We put on our rain coats, and kept on for about five minutes, at which time it started to hail, very tiny stones, perhaps 4 mm in diameter. That finished the hike, so we headed back to the shelter. It was a bit drier there, but it wasn’t great as the shelter isn’t very waterproof, and rain was blowing in through the screen. So after the rain stopped, Enid and I got the tarp out and put it over the shelter. That is much better, and it gives us some protection from the wind as well, which was good because there were many brief storms for the rest of the afternoon.
Supper involved barbequing steaks in another rainstorm, but after that the storms cleared. This evening was very pleasant, though cool at this altitude. We tried to hike along the shore, but the water is too high and the shoreline trail is drowned. So all in all, we didn’t hike very far today.