Travel with Kevin and Ruth: Too close to the highway, but at least it's a nice setting!

Slept fine at the church, but moved early this morning to have our breakfast at the mall using the unsecured wifi coming from Domino's Pizza. Nobody was in there eating pizza for breakfast so it was pretty fast wifi with us being the only ones using it!

Then, we made our way to the Whitecourt Visitors Center located in the Forest Interpretive Center.

There is another free dump station and water fill at the Interpretive Center. That's three of them in this city of 10,000 people! And it does seem like a lot of people have RVs up here, so maybe they need to have three free dump and fill stations.

The Forest Interpretive Center was just okay. I actually expected more based on the reviews, but they really only have a small museum, and a small display showing how they make various forest products. The museum did have some interesting pieces though.

Hope we don't get too close to one of these fellows!

We are definitely in bear country now. Black bears mostly in this area, but grizzly bears too. Lots of signs around warning you to be "bear aware". The one above was a 700 lb male, but they can grow up to 1,000 lbs!

We were the only visitors.

Not sure who the rest of the vehicles belonged to.

They have some walking and bicycling trails in the area so we went for a 5 km (3 mile) walk...

Ruth on the trail.

Look up!

We had an early lunch, and then hit the road. It was windy again, but it was mostly a head wind. Okay to drive in, but not so good for fuel mileage. I kept our speed at 85 km/h (53 mph) to conserve. No problem going that speed because it's two lanes in each direction, and traffic wasn't that heavy.

It's moose country!

Haven't seen any yet though.

Scenery along the way.

Not the most exciting drive. Lots of trees!

We stopped in the town of Fox Creek at the visitors center there, and then went for another 1 km (0.6 mile) walk on a short trail. The lady in the visitors center said that we could overnight in their parking lot, but it was right by the highway and not very scenic.

We asked about the Pines Recreation Area abut 12 kms further along the highway and she said that yes, we could overnight there for free. That sounded better to us, so we carried on.

Sherman, at the Fox Creek visitors center.

Yep, this is better!

GPS 54.461485, -116.947595

It's still located too close to the highway, but at least it's a nice setting. It used to be a provincial park, but some locals took it over when the province gave it up and now they have a group of volunteers who maintain it and offer free camping. Firewood included. Quite a few locals keep their trailers here as seasonals. Nice spot, but like I said it's too close to the highway. It'll do for an overnight though!