Today was a short driving day of around 2.5 hours. We too the back roads to Vancouver and it was very scenic, but a bit of wildfire haze ruined the view a bit. Wayne had sent me a photo of an airnz plane at Vancouver airport and it made me a little homesick.

We were excited and a little nervous about meeting Wayne and Sue, the YouTubers we follow.

Wayne is a pilot and I’m not sure what Sue does, but they both work from home when Wayne isn’t flying.

So we arrived at 3.30pm and we were greeted with hugs. As we watch each other others channels, it felt like we already knew each other.

They took us out for dinner at their local pub, which we’d also seen on YouTube. It was all quite surreal! They’ve said we can camp out as long as we like, so we’ll probably move on , on Saturday or Sunday.

Such a ridiculously hot day of 40 degrees or more.

We continued driving towards Vancouver through the stunning Fraser canyon with huge mountains and a river way down below. But it was hot. Too hot to stop anywhere. Do we kept driving.

A new fire had sprouted up on the side of the road, plumes of smoke rising up. Thankfully the fire brigade were there already and further along the helicopter was on the side of the road getting ready to put it out.

It’s scary, all the fires. You never know when they might close the roads off.

We drove over 500 kms today before finally arriving at a nice campground on the river at around 9pm. It was still hot. We opted for a powered site so re could run out air conditioning.

I fired it up and it blew a blast of Dempster dust in my face. But it was nice to finally be cool.

Tomorrow are going to. Vancouver to visit some YouTubers we follow. They said we can park outside their house!

We were up at 5.30am to make sure we made it to the muffler shop by 8am.

It was a straight forward fix and replacing the muffler cost $300. They also noticed a suspension strut was loose and flapping about, so they fixed that too.

The owner was really nice and he recommended driving 8 hours to prince rupert and catchin a 17 hour ferry to Vancouver island. It sounded like a great trip through some of the inside passage, what people pay thousands to see. But it would have meant backtracking 5 hours through an area we’d already done earlier. And we would have been back almost to Alaska!

We went to a laundromat to do our laundry and they had super fast wifi so I was able to upload a video. We had decided to backtrack and catch the ferry. Mike has filled in all the booking details for Thursday and was about to pay when I changed my mind. I don’t know what it was but I decided I didn’t want to backtrack.

So we took the boring option and headed south towards Vancouver. We’re going to meet up with a YouTuber we follow there, so that should be interesting. He said we can camp outside his house, which is conveniently near the ferry to Vancouver island (the two hour ferry, not the 17 hour one.)

We stopped at around 5pm at a provincial park on the shade. We ate, played cards, and went to bed.

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.