North to Alaska: Day 40

Welcome! Day 40 (Sept 17) of North to Alaska

Quote: “Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and celebrate the journey." -- Fitzhugh Mullan

Today was a good day, actually better than I expected. We left Nugget City and travelled to Bell2. Neither of these places can be found on our map nor in our onboard GPS. But we were in Nugget City when we left in the morning and by the end of the day we were in Bell 2. We know they exists. While Nugget City has been around for many years and is part of Watson Lake although several miles from the actual town, Bell 2 is a new place which is still in the development stage and is not part of any other town/community. Bell 2 is similar to Nugget City as it has a gas station, cabins, restaurant, and RV park. Where Nugget City is a good stopping place on the Alaskan Highway, Bell 2 is a good stopping place on the Alaska Stewart Highway.

We left after breakfast around 9:30 heading south on the Alaska Stewart Highway, also known as Hwy 37. We believed the road would not be very good. It did have a few one lane bridges and was narrow in a few places but with no traffic theses were not problems. The road was mostly paved with several curves and ups and downs. We have been on worst roads on this trip. After a few hours of driving we stopped at the Jade Store better known as Jade City (notice they use city a lot). This is a family owned Jade mine. We saw a lot of Jade in their store. They offered free coffee to get people to stop. We stopped for the rest room and bought some Jade things. A little later on we stopped at a lake and I took some pictures. About 3:30 we arrived at Bell 2. I do not know how the name came about. We checked in and made our way to our cabin. While the cabins were fairly new, they had no A/C which is not unusual up here but they also did not have a heater which is unusual for this area. There was a small heater in the bathroom. They did have a pot belly stove with a wood box full of wood. So I was a good boy scout and had a fire going straight way. Outside temperature was in the 40s so not real cold but chilly enough for Cassie. We kept the fire going until bed time but for some reason the room stayed warm throughout the night.

So ended day 40. Tomorrow on the Prince Rupert.