It’s Sunday and we have to fill in time as we’re getting our muffler fixed in Prince George tomorrow.

We spent most of the day in the campground, then drove 30 mins up the road to another campground, this means we only have an hours drive to prince george in the morning.

Our campsite was really nice, overlooking a lake with our own private walkway to a sandy spot in the lake. There were signs about parasites in the water and swimmers itch, so we decided not to swim, but I did paddle my feet. Probably not a good idea with my itchy bites.I’ve had bites on my feet for almost a week and they are so itchy!

It’s been really hot. Mid 30s for days on end. I’m really struggling with the heat.

Not much happened today. We didn’t leave our campsite until lunchtime as we are both feeling so tired. I think we’ve been running on adrenaline and excitement to this point. It’s still nice scenery but not of the stunning nature we’ve seen earlier in the trip.

It was a beautiful blue sky day but it was really hot. We are missing our aircon. We drove for about 170 kms before stopping at a provincial park with lots of trees for shade. We both fell asleep. We woke up long enough to take a walk to the lake, cook dinner, play cards, and back to bed by 9pm.

The days are getting shorter now, and it gets dark between 11 and 4am. I’m actually missing the midnight sun.

We’ve got to fill in time until Monday, when we can get our muffler looked at.

We got up early and headed into Fort St John, a town with about 24000 people. We hoped to get our muffler fixed but they don’t have a replacement. So we’ve booked into a garage in prince George, about 6 hours drive away for Monday.

We spent the day catching up on groceries, uploaded a video, and had a shower for the first time in ages.

We went back to the camping ground from the previous night as it was in forest and sheltered from the sun. We had a lazy afternoon.

There are quite a few wildfires on our route south to Vancouver, so we may have to fast track some of it.

We spent two days at a free riverside campsite. It was a beautiful spot beside the fast flowing Toad river, a weird green colour.

We spent the time cleaning the dust out of our van. We had taken onboard a lot of dust on the Dempster highway. We took everything out, cleaned it off and put it back in.

The days were really hot, mid 30s with little shade, but it was a nice break. We met a couple of poms about Mike’s age who are touring on motorcycles. They used to do a lot of cycle touring, but decided they are getting too old for it, so have upgraded to motorcycles. They are planning to ride all the way to Argentina. I’ve been tossing around the idea of motorbike touring for a few years now and these guys have piqued my interest.

We left our campsite Tuesday morning with the plan of doing some hikes at Summit lake, but not long into the drive we were inundated with wildfire smoke. It was very claustrophobic to drive in, and we had to keep the windows shut.

After two hours we arrived in Fort Nelson, the same town that was evacuated in May due to fires, preventing us from travelling this way. Over 180,000 hectares are burning at the moment. 40,000 hectares of this are new fires in the last 4 days! Crazy!

We had the first internet in about a week, so I called sister Susan to wish her happy birthday, stocked up on supplies and continued on. The smoke got thicker as we headed south and it was another 2 hours before the skies suddenly cleared.

It was such a relief to be out of the smoke. There was nowhere to stop, so we kept driving until we found a state park and stopped for the night.

Today was a spectacular day, the sun was shining, and it was really hot.

Our first stop was the liard hot springs. It was only $5 each. The entire complex was surrounded by electric fence to keep the bears from sneaking in for a midnight dip. We still took our bear spray.

It was a ten minute walk along a boardwalk and it was absolutely stunning. We arrived at the pools and they were gorgeous in a natural setting. They had two pools next to each other. One was super hot and the other was just right!

After our swim, we continued driving the Alaska highway and it was an incredible drive. We saw six bears today, the first ones we’d seen in months!

We drove past Muncho lake which is a big lake with beautiful green water. We tried to get a paid camping spot beside the lake but they were all taken.

We continued driving until we found a wonderful free campsite beside a river, even more beautiful than the paid sites at muncho lake. We sat beside the river (with our bear spray, and watched the river flow by.

We spent 3 days here while we cleaned the dust out of our van and did some minor repair s.

Today we headed to the signpost forest, which is a forest of over 100000 signs! And of course we had to contribute. They have everything there you need to make your own sign.

We paid $2 for a plank of wood from the hardware store, borrowed their stencil, and used our own coloured pens to make a sign. It was pretty simple. A funny looking kiwi and New Zealand stenciled across the top.

They even had a hammer and nails to secure it to a post. That was the next task, trying to find space. We wandered around for ages looking and finally found a spot.

We were both pretty tired so we spent the day there. The visitor centre had showers, wifi, and a short movie to watch on the building of the Alaska highway.

A quiet nights sleep in the carpark under a tree, as it’s been very hot.

We mucked around this morning doing I don’t know what, but we didn’t leave Whitehorse until after lunch.

It was mainly just a driving day along the Alaska highway heading east. Not much to report as we were mostly covering ground we’d already driven.

We stopped in the same field we stopped at on the way up.

We spent the day in Whitehorse doing chores. Our muffler had come loose where the tail pipe and front pipes connect. We rang one garage and they are fully booked for July. The other place in town had a 10 day wait. No wonder people are driving around town in crappy cars. Mike picked up some muffler weld paste with the hope of fixing it himself.

Then we did laundry, shopping, and spent the afternoon at Starbucks uploading a video.

In the afternoon we had a brief nap , then Mike fixed the muffler and changed our filthy air filter.

We went to the Whitehorse markets which on every Thursday from 3pm to 7pm. It reminded me a bit of gourmet in the gardens. We had dumplings followed by some southern bbq brisket which was really yummy for so far north.

Then we decided on a very early night as we were both so tired, collapsing into bed just after 9pm, still in the Canadian superstore carpark.

We only have about an hours drive to finish the Dempster highway. We were going to head back to Dawson City to check on the status of the wildfires blocking our route south, but that would have meant an 80 km detour. So we asked Matt again to check the status of the road. That Garmin has come in handy when out of range.

The road has been closed off for weeks with pilot cars ferrying people through when safe. People I’ve spoken to, said it’s about an hours drive through thick wildfire smoke. Last I’d heard, the road was completely closed and they were evacuating people. I’m not looking forward to it, that is if the road is even open by the time we get there.

I was very surprised when Matt got back to us, to say the road was open. At the end of the Dempster was an unattended fuel station and thankfully we were able to fill up and be on our way.

Heading south towards the fires were no cars for ages. Then a jeep over took us. Not long after he pulled over and turned around. Did he just get word the road had closed again? I asked Matt for another update, and thankfully the road was still showing as open.

It was weird travelling on tarseal again after 9 days on dirt. When we finally made it to where the fires were, there was a sign saying wildfire smoke for about 100 kms. We expected there to be a pilot car but nothing. The road was completely open, just a bit of smouldering here and there. The rain must have helped heaps.

It was a long day as we kept on driving until we got to Whitehorse. We parked at the Canadian superstore carpark with a few other vans for the night and stocked up on supplies.

It rained on and off during the night. We’d been told the roads are very slippery when wet so we weren’t sure whether to sit out the rain or continue on. We used our Garmin Inreach to contact Matt for a weather report. Rain was forecast for today ( Tuesday), fine Wednesday then rain for the rest of the week.

We continued to Eagle Plaines and fuelled up and checked our route. Wildfires were still blocking our route south, but we’d worry about them when we got there.

It wasn’t raining as yet so we decided to push on and get as far as we could before the roads got muddy and slippery.

We had some heavy rain on the drive and this is when our wipers decided to pack up again. Mike drove for 50 kms in the rain, on a dirt road with no wipers before we found a decent place to stop and fix them. We had some lunch first and by the time we’d finished the rain had stopped. How convenient!

Mike tried to fix them but he didn’t have the correct tool. A couple from Quebec pulled in to help. He had a better tool and they were able to fix it. It barely rained for the rest of the day!

The road surface is so bad on this stretch, it was really slow going. We stopped on the side of the road for a 40 minute nap before continuing.

We found a little gravel pit off the side of the road with trees separating us from the road and settled down for the night.