14 June. Ft Nelson, BC. Rain

We had planned to stop at the Sikanni (rhymes with Tiffani) River about 130 miles south of Ft. Nelson, but the entire RV park was encumbered in some sort of black mud that looked like tailings from a coal mine.  The camp host kindly refunded our park fee, in the form of gasoline which we needed anyway.  The RV spot in Ft. Nelson is much nicer, but the wet ground everywhere poses challenges to keeping the RV from getting trashed.  Gas is expensive in Canada.  It must be the tax rate, since Canada produces quite a lot of the stuff.  Some speculation is that the massive fires far northeast in Ft. McMurray damaged some facilities.  A distributor called "Petro Canada" has several stations closed for lack of fuel.  Our average price runs around 1.15 Canadian Dollars per liter, which converts to around $4.31 per gallon in US Dollars. But then when you calculate the exchange rate of about 0.8 Canadian per dollar, the cost to us is about $3.45 per gallon.  The most we have paid so far is $1.65 per liter, $6.19 per gallon Canadian, or $4.95 per gallon in US Dollars.  John and I are both getting between 8 and 11 miles per gallon.  Do the math at 12,000 miles.  Driving to Alaska and back is not cheap, but it is worth the price.  

The sign says "Welcome to British Columbia."  I took this photo during a 30 second period without rain.  It has been raining off and on pretty much the past two days.  John and I both washed our vehicles in Grande Prairie.  We are pretty certain that alerted the rain gods to downpour on our shiny trucks.