Before departing this morning, I went outside to attach the Protect-A-Tow which is a device to protect a towed vehicle from road debris. It attaches to the bottom of the RV rear bumper and the bottom of the Jeep front bumper. Anyways, I discovered that there was a truck pulling a camper trailer parked behind us. I don't know if they had been planning to boondock there or if we had acted as a decoy and pulled them in. We left around 9:20.

It was mostly cloudy — perfect bear light!

The transmission gave me a scare as we were descending a steep grade to the Sikanni Chief River. I was in second gear and the engine was up around 5500 rpm, a bit higher than the 5000-5200 rpm where it usually runs under such conditions. The next thing I knew, it popped out of gear and the engine rpms dropped way down. Fortunately we were near the bottom of the steepest section so we didn't pick up too much speed while coasting, but I couldn't get it back into gear, not even into Drive! I did not want to have to push the RV to Alaska! After maybe 30 seconds, which seemed an eternity, I was able to get the transmission to engage in Drive, and we continued on our way, albeit with a slightly elevated heart rate. :)

We stopped to photograph a woodland caribou on the shoulder at 10:40. It spooked when a tractor trailer went by, and ran off into the woods ending the shooting session before I got anything great. It was J's first encounter with a woodland caribou and her best caribou encounter ever.

I started to listen to an episode of Car Talk on my iPod. That was interrupted by ... ... a black bear by the side of the road at 11:13 that we stopped to photograph. It was a very cooperative and laid back subject. It didn't seem to mind when other vehicles stopped and disgorged noisy tourists with their point and shoots who practically ran along the road to get as close as possible to the bear while still staying on the road. Of course, humans are very safe when they're on the road. It's a manmade object that is very comforting to them and wildlife will stay far away — not! After a while, the bear tired of all the attention and slowly meandered away from the road back into the bush, so we packed up and left around 11:40.

I had some Clif Bars for lunch while driving, then listened to more of the Car Talk episode that had gotten interrupted. We stopped to photograph a black bear sow with two cubs around 11:55. The sow kinda growled at me when I started to move up closer to her, so I took the hint and moved back to give her some more breathing room. The cubs played with each other occasionally, and didn't seem to be as comfortable being next to the road as their mother was. They kept heading up the embankment away from the road trying to encourage their mother to join them. Eventually she did, so we packed up and got ready to leave around 12:05. By the time we were ready to go, they had come out of the heavy brush and were headed back towards the road again, so we set up to photograph them some more. After a while, they crossed the road to feed on the other side. The nice cloud cover broke and it got too contrasty, so we left around 12:35.

I had another Clif Bar to round out lunch, then I finished listening to the episode of Car Talk.

We stopped at the Goodyear Tire store in Fort Nelson around 2:20 to have our wheel lugs retorqued as per the recommendation of the Gear-O-Rama folks. They were busy and directed us across the street to Tirecraft. They had someone come out to retorque our lug nuts within about 10 minutes. When I went back inside to ask the service manager what I owed him, he said nothing. Gotta love service like that!

Then we went to the Fort Nelson Museum to use their free sanistation to dump our gray and black tanks and load up on fresh water.

We headed back into town a bit to the Fas Gas to load up the RV.

By the Testa River Services & Campground, the "Cinnamon Bun Center of the Galactic Cluster" — gotta love these places!

To the East entrance of Stone Mountain Provincial Park. The park is a great place to see stone sheep (Ovis dalli stonei), one of the so-called "thinhorn sheep" like Dall sheep (Ovis dalli dalli) as opposed to bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis).

To the Summit Lake Campground of Stone Mountain Provincial Park around 5:55 where we spent the night. Summit Lake is right next to Summit Pass (4250 ft, 1295m), the highest point on the Alaska Highway.

Dinner of J's minestrone soup and garlic bread. The fee-collection guy came by as I was doing the dishes.

Go look for stone sheep around 7:05. We found a cow moose with a calf and some caribou not too far down the road, but there were no stone sheep where they usually hang out. :( On our way back to the RV, we saw a merganser by the shore of Summit Lake and a beaver swimming out in the middle of Summit Lake.