-----The road so far has constituted what is essentially the first leg of the trip: the journey to Milepost 0 of the Alaska Highway. With today we entered what we called "Milepost territory" in that our entire route was contained within the latest volume of the road map collection that prides itself as "The Bible of North Country Travel."

-----8:00 AM saw my dad travel to the dealership in Whitecourt for an oil change and routine inspection that we'd had planned since we were well in the States. By the time he returned around an hour later, he reported that everything with the vehicle was good and that he'd made friends amongst the mechanics, who told him that they get a lot of vehicles from the States passing through en route to Alaska.

-----With a clean bill of health for the vehicle, we struck out for British Columbia. Our first stop of the day was over an hour in, when we stopped for a top-off of gas in Valleyview, Alberta, which would enable us to get all the way to our destination without stopping in the larger city of Grande Prairie.

-----There is a gas station in Valleyview that touts itself on having an excellent bathroom, which continues a theme throughout the northern slice of the western provinces. They're very proud of their winners and runner-ups in a very competitive yearly event, in which theirs was the 2013 winner—and boy, did it show. The stalls had wooden doors, there were chandeliers, and there was fancy tile and granite. It was a chaise lounge away from charging admission.

-----And this wasn't just the inside of any old gas station. It was closer to a general store. In addition to the goodies found in any convenience stop, they sold button-up shirts, novelty socks, NFL hats, a full cafeteria's worth of meats and sandwiches with booths at which to eat their goodies, and much more. Our lunch was a small sampling of their wings, which, while small, were surprisingly good.

-----Outside the station, as my dad began to climb into the driver's seat, a man came up to him and began a sales pitch about an all-natural car cleanser. Initially intrigued by the possibility of acquiring some to finish our heretofore pointless squeegee search, he went over to their tent which they'd pitched outside the store and managed to get a deal; we ended up getting two bottles of the stuff (which actually does work and will help on dustier points north) for half of their initially absurd asking price. As it turns out, one of the four entrepreneurs who started the thing had a relative in Raleigh.

-----We continued on the road past Valleyview, where we picked up a great many trucks en route to Grande Prairie. But while the direct route would have taken us through the city, the fastest route was a straight shot around as provided by secondary roads. These roads took us over hill and dale, past prairies demarcated for use as ranches, farms, and oil fields, on what must have been one of the straightest roads I've ever seen. The only variation in its path, aside from the constant rolling hills and the ever-increasing bumpiness of the roads themselves, was around one single lake.

-----We rejoined Route 34 westbound and found ourselves not far from the British Columbia border. It began to rain as we found ourselves in decidedly more hilly and mountainous country as the fields of the titular Grande Prairie fell away to more lush forests. Yet as we climb north, the nature of the forests change; within a day or so, the last of the skinny deciduous trees will give way to a sea of evergreens.

-----Within short order we passed through the village of Pouce Coupe, which is one of the great town names in all of Canada. But our time in its quaint surroundings were short-lived, as we soon made it to Dawson Creek: mile 0 on the Alaska Highway. Two signs mark the beginning; the first, at the actual site of the beginning of construction, welcomes travelers to the world-famous Alaska Highway, while the second—in the middle of an intersection in the small downtown—is a reconstruction of the actual monument at milepost 0 which used to be at the first location before it was destroyed by a drunk driver not too long after the highway opened.

-----We exited the car to get pictures and to stretch our legs around the small museum that adjoins the welcome center. Of all things, the previous visitors to log their names in the guest book are also from North Carolina. Much of the information about the construction of the Alaska Highway—known as the "ALCAN" to the military when it was built—was what we already knew, but it was nonetheless still astounding. In eight months, the crew built, logged, blasted, and problem-solved their way over a thousand-plus miles of theretofore barely charted terrain. It stands among the foremost engineering achievements of the twentieth century, and it is a testament to the urgency of their initial mission that the road, though long since built, was only fully paved in the recent decades.

-----Dawson Creek also exploded in the 1940s when a fire got into a building that contained improperly stored dynamite. Without a central firefighting system in place, many believed that the entire town would burn. In the aftermath, martial law was declared, and today only one building stands from before the explosion.

-----No such eventfulness happened to us during our time in Dawson Creek; we were happy to have made it to such a momentous occasion on the trip, but our day's drive was not yet complete. We struck out north on the Alaska Highway towards our ultimate destination of Fort Saint John, only to find an inordinate number of trucks coming in the opposite direction. The path between the two cities is so well-traveled that the authorities are in the process of making the route between them four lanes. Aside from the nature of the trees, it was indistinguishable from a route in many of the contiguous 48.

-----We deftly avoided the few present potholes and gave oncoming trucks as wide a berth as possible, but we soon slowed and presently came to a complete stop. We even turned off the engine as we saw a cavalcade of vehicles coming in the opposite direction. We went forward perhaps half a mile before stopping again, and then finally we were sent forward for good. Road construction—ever-present amidst the forces of nature this far north—made for one-directional travel up and down what is known by locals as Taylor Hill but what reasonable folks like us would call a big freakin' mountain. The grades reached 10% at maximum, but most of the drive wasn't as steep and in many places we could simply coast. The most horrible thing was what awaited us at the bottom of this "hill:" a long bridge, slanted uphill, with metal grates for a driving surface. This was not particularly pleasant, but made the blacktop on the other side feel all the sweeter. Before we knew it, we had come into Fort Saint John.

-----One does not realize how clean and neat roads are further south. Dust and grime and dirt are ever-present, as many locals use unpaved roads as a matter of course. How well one drives has no impact on how dirty one's car gets; before long, everything has a layer of grime. The route to our hotel—which is all but right on the Alaska Highway—featured multi-lane roads with no markings as to the differentiation of various lanes.

-----Our vehicle, which is of considerable relative size in the contiguous 48, is now dwarfed by the immensity of the trucks with which we find ourselves surrounded. It makes it easier to park because all of the parking lot spaces are built for these enormous trucks—that is, when we can actually see the spaces.

-----The ladies at the front desk of our hotel said that Fort Saint John did not have very many local places; indeed, it's of a very industrial nature. We ended up at Original Joe's, which was a bit of a bar-and-grill. It didn't have very many patrons, which allowed us to establish rapport with our gregarious Australian waitress. She admitted that the only reasons anyone ends up in Fort Saint John was for love or money, and in her case it was the former—but the plethora of oil industry jobs in the area mean that many are here for the latter. We discussed the hilarious umpiring of Australian-Rules Football, why they call Taylor Hill a hill and not a mountain, and other timeless subjects of interest.

-----I got a massive Caesar salad with a grilled chicken breast and a single garlic breadstick, and all of it was quite good. I've always thought that restaurants could be judged on the quality of their croutons, and I have reason to believe that theirs were made from day-old garlic breadsticks. I wolfed it all down in short order and then finished what my mom didn't want of her bruschetta chicken pasta with a pesto cream sauce, which was quite tender and excellent as well. My dad got what he'd been seeing grazing out in the fields all day: a slice of tender, succulent, perfectly cooked Alberta beef and a skewer of shrimp. On the side, he got cole slaw in lieu of broccolini, and I'm not sure whether this is because of how much he likes cole slaw or because he's not sure what broccolini is. (To be fair, I'm not entirely sure either. It sounds vaguely like a genetic experiment.)

-----For dessert, my dad and I split "dirt pie," which is the local equivalent of mud pie. It came in two solid square logs with about an inch of diameter, and it had chocolate ice cream and maple ice cream blocks interleaved with chocolate wafers. I'm not usually a fan of darker chocolates, but in the case of the dirt pie I made a rousing exception.

-----It was during this meal that my dad recalled a box of maple cookies that we'd gotten at yesterday's impromptu Wal-Mart run in North Battleford. We'd finished them off in the car that very same day and he'd been talking about them ... well, not constantly, but often enough to be annoying. Thus, after dinner, we went across the road to ... a Wal-Mart.

-----We do not eat out often—if at all—at home. Furthermore, I cannot tell you the last time I've been in a Wal-Mart at home. We go to the ends of the continent to do the kinds of things that most people do much more often, which tells you everything you need to know about the nature of the whimsical misadventures that we get up to.

-----We avoided piles of broken glass and potholes the size of ATVs to get to the Wal-Mart, where we bought two boxes of these maple cookies and one box of fully cooked, sealed-up, ready-to-eat bacon, partially because we need meaty supplies for points north and partially because we can drag the box all the way to the Arctic Circle for a picture in honor of the fully cooked bacon we hauled around—without consuming—on the first Great American Road Trip.

-----Tomorrow: our first full day on the Alaska Highway north to Toad River. We may not have Internet access, but an entry will still be written for posting at a later date should such a situation occur.