Day 70 - Iskut, BC

We were up at the crack of dawn and on the road by eight. It was already getting warm. Yes, I said the crack of dawn. We now have darkness at night. This is nice because the last time we were through this area it was light all night and very hot. We know sooner turned onto the Stewart-Cassier Highway and found ourselves crossing into British Columbia.

So far the road had been good, no construction, potholes, or big hills to deal with. Several beautiful little lake made the drive even better. We stopped for a pit stop at this one. Obviously there had been a wildfire at one time. 

We made a stop at the only sign of civilization along the route so far, Jade City. This place I guess is pretty famous. There's a TV show about mining for jade, I've never seen it and their on season 5. Who'd thought.

When we drove in I was told to move my rig down further because a helicopter was going to land on the road. And sure enough within a few minute one landed right where I was parked. They had to medivac someone that was really sick. And yes the caravan is still following us, you can see the yellow sticker on the big rig.  

Further down the road and getting closer to Dease Lake the air quality really deteriorated. We could see new wildfires in the hills right by the road. It was a little disconcerting. At times the visibility was almost zero. From the next picture you can see the poor air quality. And this was good.

Just after I took this picture a fire helicopter few overhead. We passed Dease Lake and the road to Telegraph Hill. Later, we found out Telegraph Hill was being evacuated and one house was burning. That's getting real close. 

We were held up with road construction for about a half hour. During that time the flag girl came to talk to us. I was coughing so bad from the smoke she had to leave so I could roll up the window. Not 10 minutes down the road there was no smoke at all. We had already decided that if it was that bad in Iskut we would continue on. But it got better, way better. We pulled into the campground and found one of the nicest if not the nicest campground we have stayed in so far, the mountains, the lake, the owner, and no smoke made it that amazing. 

Shortly after supper, as the campground was filling up we could see this ominous cloud coming towards us from the north. Oh no, wildfire smoke.

This is the beautiful view we had from our rig. I got my binoculars out to see if I could see and mountain sheep or goats. Nope nothing.

This is the view we had within an hour of the first signs of wildfires coming our way. Lucky for us, the smoke stayed above us in the mountains and not in the valley. We couldn't smell it at all. The owner kept us aware of what was going on, if we had to evacuate. Tomorrow on to Stewart, hopefully no smoke.