What do you call a guy who sets off on a 3,600-mile road trip in the dead of winter to drive the Rocky Mountain chain from Alaska to southern Colorado? Bear in mind that this is the same guy who goes kayaking with his Australian shepherd - in the ocean.

Crazy doesn't quite sum it up, because there was a fair amount of planning up front. Adventurous is probably closer to the mark, because these are the undertakings that lead to stories - for your buddies and for your future grandchildren. "That's nothing. I once drove the Alcan in December with a dog and two cats."

Hey, it's got to be better than sitting in an office attending a budget meeting or deciding annual employee raises. Who's the crazy one now?

Number nine, number nine,...: On my drive north in August 2004, I had truck problems with a plug wire that had a crack in the insulation, blowing the wire off the spark plug as the wire arced to the engine block. That was in Airdrie, Alberta and I was fortunate to be able to limp to a nearby Ford dealership for repair. The root cause was that I had changed out my plugs before leaving Colorado since my odomoter was at about 110,000 miles. My process of changing the plugs apparently created the crack in the insulation that didn't manifest itself for at least 1,500 miles.

This morning, I elected to use the indoor RV wash at Country Roads RV Park to clean all the mud off my truck and trailer. Everything you touched just got you more and more muddy and the mud was migrating to the inside of the truck and the coach.

In the process of spraying water all over the place, I have apparently done something to disrupt the braking system on the trailer. So, once again, I find myself about 1,500 miles into the drive between Alaska and Canada with vehicle problems in the middle of Alberta. At least there are facilities available. The Bigfoot dealership is closed for the holidays from Dec. 17 through Jan. 2, but Happy Trails RV Sales and Service on the northeast side of town is open and can have a mechanic look at the problem within an hour.¹

The verdict: probably not my fault. The ground wire was broken where it connects at the trailer axle. What might have happened is that the wire was just barely hanging on or the mud was holding it in place and the power sprayer broke the physical connection. Either that or I hadn't noticed the braking problems the night before. I do remember a truck kicking up a rather large rock on the drive into Dawson Creek that I heard bounce around under the truck chassis and then under the trailer.

At any rate, if this is the worst thing that happens on the trip, then it will be a great trip. During both instances, I have found the people in Alberta to be very friendly and extremely helpful in these situations.² May all your travels be safe and if you should ever break down, may it at least be in Alberta.

Ken, the mechanic who fixed my trailer brakes, only works part-time. He is also a minister. His wife needs a kidney, so if you know of any people in the Grand Prairie area who might want to donate one, please have them contact Happy Trails RV at 780-538-2120.

Ken's father is from the Cree nation and he was put in a boarding school for Native Americans³ when he was younger.⁴ His father had his tongue burned for speaking his native tongue. 

I was finally on the road by 1:45 p.m. The weather remained warm and sunny. It was shirt-sleeve weather till about 4:30 p.m.⁵ It doesn't look like there will be a white Christmas around here, but I'll take the good driving conditions as long as I can get them. There is supposed to be freezing rain heading down from the north in a day or two, so I plan to stay ahead of that.

The roads in this stretch are in great shape. Much of the way is divided highway - in fact, more than appears on the map. I remember a year and a half ago driving up this route and noticing that additional divided highway was being built. All of that has been completed and they are working on more. I'd say at least two-thirds of the drive from Grand Praire to Whitecourt is now divided highway. Speeds range from 100 to 110 km/hr in most areas.

After driving about 150 miles, I called it a day and stopped in Whitecourt at the Camp in Town RV Park.⁶ I have regretted each time that I drove at night on this trip, so I thought I'd try to learn from my own experience. There is an IGA grocery store⁷ just across the highway and plenty of other amenities in town. Whitecourt is much bigger than it looks from the dot on the map with several hotels, restaurants and shopping options.

The interesting thing about driving from Grand Prairie to Edmonton is that the trees are basically gone from the Grand Prairie area⁸, but the whole region around Fox Creek and Whitecourt looks more like the terrain around Fort St. John. Maybe not as many hills, but still nice thick forest. From the looks⁹ of things, lumber and petroleum appear to be the main industries in this area.

No great revelations today¹⁰, but I am ready to attest to anyone that the people in Alberta are the most helpful folks I have ever met.¹¹

Tomorrow, it's on to Edmonton, Calgary and beyond. Current miles on the odometer are 1,839 - 11 miles shy of the half-way mark. The strange thing now is that being on the road for this many days in a row just doesn't feel strange. It's just my new way of life.

So is the metric system.

Day ten. 
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¹ The hour wait was due to my arriving right before their lunch hour started, otherwise they could have seem me right away.
² John, the mechanic at the Bigfoot dealership was nice enough to help me out over the phone before he left town to attend a funeral in Dawson Creek.
³ Canada is part of America too. In fact, I've met people in Mexico who are offended if you don't consider them Americans. Look at the map -  north, south and central America. Maybe the more that we all start thinking of everyone in the western hemisphere as Americans, it will create a common ground where we can work together on issues.
⁴ I assume the Canadian government did this. That's what happened in the U.S.
⁵ Shirt-sleeve weather for an Alaskan, Canadian, Coloradan or someone from a similar climate. People from the southern U.S. from California across to Florida would have still been wearing a jacket. Then again, the thought of a winter trip like this wouldn't appeal to most of them.
⁶ Call 780-706-5050 for directions. It is on the south side of the highway, one light north/west of the IGA intersection. It might be off Mountain Road West according to the map, but I saw a road sign that said Govenlock or something of that sort. The RV park is easy to see in the daylight, but well hidden at night.
⁷ I had to ask someone about grocery stores, or I wouldn't have known that IGA was a grocery store. I checked the cookie aisle and they had digestive cookies, but no family digestive cookies.
⁸ I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the farm land around Grand Prairie was cleared a hundred years ago, because around the edges of some fields you can see some very mature birch trees.
⁹ And smells - you can smell some of the petroleum plants. It smells a lot like west Texas.
¹⁰ Except that Jean Claude Van Damme's wife always gets killed in the first few minutes of his films.
¹¹ They are even polite in the grocery store. They say "excuse me" and mean it as opposed to a lot of people I've met who really mean "excuse YOU" when they say it. Maybe there's something in those digestive cookies. On the flip-side, the fellow who stayed in the slot next to me at the Grand Prairie RV park started up his diesel pick-up at 5:47 a.m. and didn't leave till 6:27 a.m. I left a note on his step recommending an engine-block heater as a money saver that would trim his warm-up time to less than five minutes.  The kicker is that it was 30 degrees Fahrenheit this morning.  Who knows? The way Albertans are, he might very well take the suggestion in a positive manner.

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