- this is a great hotel but i had a hard time finding it. i said as i was checking out. i had to ask that the gasbar coming into town. it is hard to read a sign when you are going at 90 clicks.
- i know she said. it took me a year even to get that sign up as it had to pass the council. now i am being fined for the thank you for staying at the good hotel. the council doesn't allow writing on both sides i have to paint over the sign as you leave town.
-if i had could have found it when i was heading north i wouldn't have had to jump through a puddle to get to my room it seems that most places around here don't have to worry due to the rooms being taken up by all the crews.
i said that she we where talking i would have to make a snap of her and went to the machine to pick up ziquinho. she followed out - which was great as i really didn't want her behind the counter.
in the damp and cold. the rain had stopped but there was a drizzle, i asked the questions that i always want to ask - why here. i may have said it with t bit of shock in my voice.
she had travelled the world trying to find a place where she felt at home. born in panama moved to other places that i cannot remember but when she arrived in the north she felt she fit in. understood the feeling finding a place where she was accepted rather than trying to fit in by giving up on certain traits.
she loved the north - but again i said why here in the north - watson lake is a place one barely slows down to get through. i feel that it is there as it is the last major place for gasoline and food until whitehorse. she liked the people. she pointed to her employees mentioning that they were all from away like her and quite interesting. she didn't want to be in the states but never thought that she would have married a canadian.
mentioned how rough it must be running your own business in a town where nothing really seems to matter. a room at her hotel was a good $40 more than anyplace else - $50 if you stayed at the renovated barracks with toilets down the hall. there seemed to be a shortage in town for rooms again due to the crews everywhere.
she was putting up a new building as the one i stayed in was shocking behind and attached to the petrocanada gasbar/convenience - or dep for habs fans. it belied the room, which in truth was a studio flat complete with a two burner range surround sound hdtv and speakers for an i-pod. i made use of none of that.
asked why she simply wasn't as cynical as the other places along the row there. hot plate, microwave, refrigerator. didn't need to she saw the hotel as an extension of her. didn't she worry about being her own boss she could really never take a holiday. yes it was called winter.
she hate the dawsons - creek and city. thought whitehorse too big. she was there for the people who would still stop by with cakes and coffee and walk in at any time - and the nature. she liked seeing grizzlies in her back garden she still picks up the camera when one happens by. she liked the people but said the place to be now is alaska - gold
i shuddered.
-they're different not like the rest.
talked for longer than i should as i had to leave the north which was at the east end of town and try to make it to dawson creek.
this was the good and bad part of travel. here was someone interesting with whom i would like to chat and will never see again 
a strange descent out of the yukon and into british columbia - twice as the road plays tag with the border. there was a convoy of us all passing the slower caravans every chance we had. but since i would stop and make a few snaps the caravans would pass me and i would have to start the whole process again. played tag with a long haul driver who ironically was held up by the caravan driving tourists as he was zipping along at 120 even up the steepest hills.
thought that i would photograph the scenery but ended up photographing the establishments that were along the way rest stops before there were official rest stops. i also made snaps of the ones that were no longer, my guessing is with travel becoming faster less rv parks, lodges and conveniences are needed and some simply folded.
with the drop the scenery had changed. more mountains, the road followed for the most part rivers through the area. it was also more "picturesque" mountains winding roads, rivers and large lakes.
but it wasn't the north. there is this line that separates zones. heading north in the upper midwest of the states, in baja wisconsin everything changes there are pine forests, trees are more abundant and they are a bit smaller.
north of 60 everything seemed to be eeking out an existence, smaller trees, a lot os scrub. a lot seemed to be on the land not in it.
i did turn north again on the road to yellowknife as i saw that the northwest territories border was nearby that would leave only nunavut
- this may be the stupidest question to-day but is there a tim's in town. i asked at the information centre in fort nelson.
- i wish... are you heading to dawson creek there is one there.
found it strange that buddy here would be suggesting that i drive six hours for a double double and not blink an eye.
-that's ok i'm a vegetarian and i'll guess i'll go to subway.
-there is an organic health food shop in town.
i get the directions and stop in but see nothing i would like as buddy behind the counter is making cupcakes and the cases all have food stuffs.
i mention what i am looking for to the owner and buddy behind the counter says there is one last serving of lentil soup. i take it with a spelt "biscuit"
this is curious. here in the middle of oil and gas land is a building that won a bc award as being the most green building in the province. serving vegetarian and at time vegan meals.
-how many people live in fort nelson?
-5000.
-what do they do
-oil and gas mainly.
i don't know what else to say the shop was clean out of place as it overlooked a canadian dolllar store and an off license.
but their coffee was roasted locally in whitehorse - locally takes on a whole new meaning - i am guessing that if it is in a day's travel it is local. they make fruit smoothies everything they make is organic as well as the produce they sell. when they can get it up to them. it seems there is only one refrigeration unit lorry that comes north and he comes complaining.
- that simply makes things more expensive.
- what isn't expensive up here?
an organic health food shop in a town of 5000 while peasants pissoir cannot even manage any sort of food shop.
sat out on the patio overlooking the carpark with the alaska highway in the background wondering why i didn't meet these people on the way up.
made their snap in front of their counter. forgot to buy coffee from them and it was too late to turn back.
my opinions of the area between fort nelson and dawson were correct. too far south too tame and while i was wrong - the rockies do tastefully loom over the foreground i really didn't care. stopped a couple of times. but making time had set in. north of fort nelson i saw another heard of bison, more elk and mountain goats, south there was a pathetic moose. houses were isolated here it seemed more because of anti soclal behaviour rather than wanting to get away.
there was more land abuse, more pipelines, more precision scars - a straight line of felled trees that went for miles then there were the farms.
dawson creek is packed again no place at the northwind lodge so am in a generic multinational hotel just beyond the wal-mart. i did see a sign for skagway again. 
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