May 18 - Bicycling in Dawson Creek

Beautiful day in Dawson Creek.  Shirtsleeves weather this morning.  We had a few sprinkles when out riding, but the air is so dry, we could feel the drops but didn't get wet.

It took some ingenuity on David's part to find the bike trail and get us around town, but we managed to go on every street in the central city.  Our first stop was at an auto parts place to get a taillight bulb for our motorcycle lift.  Then it was more of the trails.

We ended up at the Dawson Creek cemetery.  Guess we don't "sight-see" like most people.

  But we did make it to the zero mile marker in the center of town.  We spotted a couple Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers on bicycles.  Today was their first day of the season on bikes.  They'll be riding until September, then the bikes get put away until next year.

They said I could post the picture on the blog, but did not want it on Facebook or other Internet searchable site, so please do not copy it and re-post.  Thanks...

The Chamber of Commerce is near the above monument.  They don't want bikes on the sidewalk, so I asked where they had bike parking.  the lady there was super.  She told us to bring it on in, so that is our bike against the wall.  What great customer service.  This is a wonderful facility explaining the history of the Alaska Highway.  I didn't realize it was actually built as part of the WWII war effort.

The visitor center had a nice museum too. 

This was the favored "picture" spot.  We went around it several times until the "line" wasn't to long.   The husband of the family ahead of us asked if he could take a picture for us, so we did.

We were working our way back to our RV park

 We enjoyed the museums.  There is a Pioneer Village that we rode around the outside, but we weren't intrigued to pay to go in.  What was odd to us was that the storefronts were so plain and ordinary, but they had murals in the alleys.  So much artistry and talent hidden away in the alleys.

This was a 50th anniversary project to portray a 1958 parade.  Each person represents a past or present resident of Dawson Creek.

 

This mural represents the ordinary people who developed this area.  They were chosen at random by the artist.  It sits on the side of the below furniture store.

Plain in the front, but amazing on the side.

This "mountie" looks much different than the modern ones.

 They have a self-guided historic walking tour booklet to make sure you don't miss any of this community artwork.  We took lots of detours, but we did get a nice 17.5 mile bicycle ride around Dawson Creek today.  Then we spent some pleasant time with Spike and Kay, who own the almost twin mh to ours.  Spike has a tremendous amount of knowledge about these coaches.  They owned several previous motor homes, before ordering this 2008 model in 2007 (ours is a 2007).  

He taught us about several nice features on the mh, which we never knew about.  Super nice people also on their way north.  We may be going the same route, as each of our first choice routes are not yet open.  We thought we only had to worry about the Yukon being frozen, but the Top of the World Highway had some wash outs and at this point we don't know if it will be open.  

We plan to pull out tomorrow and drive the mh to the Church in town.  After Mass, we'll be heading north on the Alaska Highway.  :-)