Aug 17

15C Sunny.

Bowled well yesterday. Got some of the trees and shrubs trimmed up later on and the trimmings ready for recycling.

Today a group of bowlers from Tsawassen arrive for an interclub tournament.  We have to pick them up at the ferry terminal and bring them in, the convenience of living only 5-10 minutes from the ferry.

More of the trip from Hell.

.  He said that it started about ten or twelve miles past the town of Edson.

We found the turnoff with no problem and as the weather was considerably colder than at McBride we were soon making good time over a lightly used dirt road.  I didn’t gas up in Edson as the five gallons gave us three quarters of a tank and it was only about twenty five or thirty miles across to Whitecourt.

After about ten miles the smooth surface abruptly ended and the road turned into a mass of frozen ruts and piles of dirt and partly burned root piles.  I slowed right down and weaved my way in amongst all of the obstacles, at one point the car slewed sideways into a deep rut and I promptly tore off the muffler.

I kept going for a short distance when the surface became entirely too much for our little wagon to navigate.  I worked the car around 180 degrees and headed back the way we had come.  When we got back to highway 16 I turned left towards Edmonton and drove to the junction of highway 43 then turned left towards Whitecourt and Grande Prairie.  It was now about eleven in the morning, about when I had expected to be arriving in Prince George some 350 miles away!

We both started feeling pretty sleepy and initially passed it off to the loss of sleep, but then I started getting a headache and noticed that the dog wasn’t looking to good.  We were getting poisoned by carbon dioxide as a result of the torn off muffler and the heater directing fumes into the car!  Now we had to drive with the windows partly open.

We eventually arrived in Whitecourt and found an Esso gas station and garage.  The garage was actually closed because it was Sunday, but after telling our story and explaining we had to get to Vanderhoof, the owner put the car up on his hoist and welded on a straight pipe to the rear.  We were back on the road by about three pm.

Through the day it had been getting colder and as we left Whitecourt it started to snow.  By the time we got to Grande Prairie just after five , it was dark and a full blown blizzard was in progress.

We stopped at a café and each had a hamburger, I was now down to fifteen dollars.

We headed out again, visibility was only a few feet, again being a Sunday there was hardly any traffic, so all though we were almost all alone we didn’t have to worry about other vehicles.  What should have been just over an hours drive took just under three hours and we stopped for a coffee and to refill our thermos in Dawson Creek at about nine pm.

We dawdled for almost an hour hoping the snow would let up, it didn’t happen, so once again with a full tank we headed out going west straight into the wind and snow.

Normally the trip from Dawson Creek to Chetwynd about 50 mile further on should have taken about an hour, we didn’t arrive until just after midnight with our gas tank registering below the ¼ full mark.  The town was closed down tight, no gas stations, no cafes – nothing.

I knew the Ranger, Lorne McQueen, so I drove to the Ranger Station, stopped in front of his residence and pounded on his door until he got out of bed and came to the door.  In spite of the hour he was his usual congenial self and I explained our circumstance, I asked if I could get some fire pump gas.  He said if I had come  two days earlier, there would have been plenty, but they had just disposed of all the old gas on Friday.  He offered to let us stay the night but as I was concerned that we were now a day and a half overdue and said no to the offer.  He said that there was a gas station a few miles past town and as he and his staff usually gassed up there, the proprieter  would probably fix us up.

By the time we talked and I drove to the gas station it was after one in the morning.  The wind had stopped but it was still snowing pretty hard when I pulled up in front of the gas pumps.  The place of course was all dark and I decided I would just park for a bit before I rousted anyone out.  We drank the rest of our coffee, dozed a bit and ran the car when we started getting cold.  Finally about three am, I went over to the residence and pounded on another door.

The fellow wasn’t too happy, even when I mentioned Lorne’s name, but finally agreed to get dressed and fill us up.  Our little car only held about ten gallons of gas and in those days it should have cost under five dollars, I was charged ten dollars and didn’t feel inclined to argue!

So once again, we had a full tank and feeling a bit more optimistic started on the next leg of our journey.  The highway was covered in snow, out in the open where the wind had been blowing there was about four inches, but there were stretches where the depth was up to eight inches.  Here and there were drifts that were up to the bumper.  I kept to the middle of the road and tried to keep the car going at a steady thirty mile per hour.  We made good progress and as there was no other traffic I was able to keep to the middle of the road on all the straight stretches. After about two hours we came down the last hill of the Pine Pass, rounded a corner, caught the right front wheel in a snow drift and ended almost fully off the road on top of a ditch full of snow!  We were stuck and there was no way I was going to get the car out on my own.

It was now five am Monday morning, we sat in the car for about an hour when finally a truck appeared from the direction of Prince George.  I flagged him down and in a few minutes we had a cable hooked to the rear of the car and the rear of the semi, with no effort he just dragged us right out.  Before he went on his way, he said that we should be careful further down the road, apparently there were extreme ice conditions and cars were sliding all over.

About a half hour later, we found out what the trucker had been talking about.  A chinook had followed the snow storm on this side of the mountains and by the time we got to MacLeod Lake, there was freezing rain falling and the highway was like a skating rink. I slowed to twenty miles per hour, got in the middle of my traffic lane and just kept driving.  We passed vehicles having all kinds of difficulties, but I knew if I stopped I would become one of them.  The freezing rain turned to rain which at first didn’t make much difference to the road surface, but finally we came on snow plows, spreading sand and conditions started improving.  We pulled into Prince George at half past ten, we had been on the road for about thirty six hours, almost no sleep, had only eaten a few sandwiches and our Grand Prairie hamburgers.  I still had about four dollars, so we stopped at the A &W bought two hot dogs, shared a coke, gassed up and headed on to Vanderhoof.

In those days the government paid twenty cents a mile for mileage on a transfer, with our meal allowance for three meals each on Sunday and two meals each for Monday, I eventually submitted an expense claim of $ 128.  The six dollars for Monday was refused as we “should have arrived no later than Sunday”.