It poured for hours overnight. Which may have helped us sleep?

I fell asleep early, when kids were still running around and screaming.

But I was abruptly woken up in the midnight hour to the pre-teen in the tent beside us screaming, “OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH”

I was sure he just lost his toes to some hungry mammal. I could hear his dad ask if something was biting him but then they went silent. Then I heard every noise. It was quiet in the parking lot now. Too quiet. I could hear the odd zipper and sleeping bag rustle. Every stick snap. Every growl.

Finally I fell asleep again until around 4am when the kid next door was shouting out his pain again. And that’s when I noticed the steady rain.

Great. I guess we’ll be packing up in the rain. Again. Every morning so far but one?

This pack-up was the wettest yet. The rain fly is shoved into a reusable shopping bag and is not just wet, but submerged in the water it’s collected.

We did the best we could and then made a decision.

Let’s get a motel tonight if we can. With a shower. And laundry.

Of course we had no signal to make that happen. We didn’t even eat breakfast, just jumped in the truck to get the day started.

The first thing you cross after the Liard hot springs, is a big long suspension bridge. And we had to share it with a bison!

What looked to be an ancient old male bison, slowly shuffling his grandfather-like old legs along the middle of the bridge. There was one car ahead and much to our shock, he passed the bison! Ahhhhhhh!

So we were left to drive behind him. Slowly. Once in awhile he’d turn his head and we would stop dead. Not even breathing.

But then at the end of the bridge, he slowly shuffled to the grass.

Up aways, we found the rest of the bison herd. The youngsters were playing together on the left. Running and kicking up their back legs. Adorable!

We found a lodge with a gas pump to top up and headed towards Fort Nelson.

It rained almost the entire way. We saw a black bear with two cubs. Two dumbass RVs had placed themselves between the mom and the cubs and she was visibly upset until her cubs could get across the road and around the RVs.

We saw a moose too!

It finally dawned on me that I hadn’t sent a satellite message to Jeff to even tell him we survived the night! I pulled off along a creek to do so, and as the rain let up for a bit, I seized the opportunity and even brushed my teeth there.

In Fort Nelson, we pulled into the Visitor’s Centre and asked for some BC maps and info. They won’t provide this in Watson Lake (don’t know why) and said to stop in Fort Nelson, which is already way into British Columbia.

While I was chatting with the lady about the world’s largest perogi we hope to see in Alberta, a guy came in to ask what is wrong with your town? Everything is closed?

And he was right. There was a scheduled full day power outage. Almost everything was closed.

The Visitor Centre’s employee led us to a couple places she knew had back up power. One was the IGA grocery store. We noticed we were craving a warm meal. Must be all the rain. The best we could do was a package of warm potatoe wedges and a cold chicken wrap. That’ll do!

Topping up with fuel was trickier. The Petro Canada was her recommendation but when we pulled up, parts of the pump were lit up, but not the payment parts. The operator just stared at us, so we went back to the Co-op that looked alive when we passed.

It was a process! The pumps displayed a digital locked notice so I went inside to see if I could pre-pay. I could! I preauthorized for $100 on my credit card, and the pump let me top up. Only took $37!

And we were lucky because most of the other pumps refused to release any fuel.

I went back inside for a receipt and it was not in their computers. They were clearly a bit frazzled. People were standing everywhere. Nothing was working right.

One of the ladies had me follow her to the back of the store and into her office. I was a bit concerned they were just going to charge me the full $100 since it wasn’t showing up.

She searched through all the transactions and I went out to the pump to confirm the amount to the penny but nothing was in the long list of all the transactions for the day.

Then she realized I still had the preauthorization receipt in my head, and she was successful searching by its transaction number to find it and printed a receipt.

Meanwhile the fellow at the pump ahead of me came in and sat in the office too. He said he was an unofficial employee. He said something about having more power outages once the town put in these diesel generators then he could remember in the last 40 years, and something messed up the store’s generators. Also something about solar and batteries. I didn’t quite follow what was going on but we had a fun lighthearted chat while the chaos continued in the store.

And fortunately, the cell signal worked! I used the Expedia app to book a hotel ahead in Fort St John. For cheap! The Ramada for only $130? Clearly we were no longer in the expensive Yukon!

With nothing ahead but more rain, we decided that committing to another 4 hours of driving would be fine.

We saw three deer along the way. And lots of dirty oil patch trucks and semis.

And now we are in a hotel!

We have done our laundry and had showers. My Gold status in Expedia provided free snacks at the front desk:

And pizza and wings just arrived!

This is exactly what we needed!

This bed is no memory foam air mattress but it’ll do! 🤣

And the movie channel is showing Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club tonight. Yay!

Here’s our view:

Good night!