Day Two - Summit Lake Campground

On day two of our journey, we left Fox Creek bright and early and headed northwest toward Grande Prairie and then onto Dawson Creek, which is the start of the Alaska Highway. The road was built by the U.S. Military during WW2 and opened to the public in 1948. It was originally about 2700km long, but over the years, with improvements, has been shortened to 2232km. It was known, way back when, to be an extremely challenging drive, but has since been completely paved. It is a very scenic and easy drive, provided you are always surrounded with courteous drivers, which is rarely the case no matter where you go. There was a fair amount of traffic, and we later heard that this has been one of the busiest years for Northern travel that people can remember.

Anyway, we stopped for a family photo at the famous sign in Dawson Creek and toured around the nearby art gallery and Visitor Center. 

We put on 917 kilometers in total on Day 2 by the time we stopped at Summit Lake Campground for the night, which is Mile 373 of the Alaskan Highway.  We seen many a black bear, and please keep in mind, that even though my photo looks like a close-up, I did not get out of the truck and I have a decent camera! 

Summit Lake Campground, not to be confused with Summit Lake, both in British Columbia, was right along the highway, which didn't turn out to be a problem as far as noise was concerned. There is a small lake with a walking trail to explore, so my kiddos had a good time.

It rained hard that evening, and then hailed. It hailed enough that there were little piles of ice here and there that lasted until the morning. You would not believe the noise in our little tent trailer. One had to yell to be heard at all. We just sat in our camper and waited it out.