Day 4: Fort Nelson to Watson Lake
The reason we drove like madwomen yesterday was so Sharyn could spend two hours parbroiling herself in Liard Hot Springs. I went for a walk instead, along a boardwalk bordered with wildflowers that had no business growing at this latitude, including an entire marsh filled to the brim with what I think were violets.
We were on the road again by 4 p.m., a section of highway with multiple personality disorder. One minute it arrows down through a spectacular granite gorge where stone sheep, including four rams with full curls, a dozen ewes and one lamb, are licking up salt at the sides of a road that is more patch than pavement and your car shares the lane with alders and aspens.
The next moment the road widens to a highway with shoulders as wide as the lanes and you’re going over the top of a mountain with a view all the way south to Banff and all the way north to home.
The next you’re traveling along a river that has over time been reduced to a mile-wide corridor of gravel with a moose cow and calf standing hip deep in the only remaining channel and three RVs trying to ram each other for the best site from which to take a picture.