Alarms woke us up at 7:45 for a somewhat shorter 7.5 hour drive to Jade City.

We drove across the street to fill up on gas and coffee, and I asked the lady in the shop if she had any dog-poop bags, and she just looked at me like I was crazy and said, “There’s enough forest out there for them to use”. Fair enough, I guess.

On the road to WhiteHorse we saw a couple of wild (brown) horses playing by the side of the road.

We stopped at WhiteHorse for some more road snacks and some beers for the evening, but apparently you can’t buy alcohol in a grocery store. The liquor store we found was really nice, but everything was behind a counter and you had to ask for it, which made me feel like I was in some kind of high-end weed shop in California. Anyway, I picked a selection pack from Yukon Brewing and a half decent bottle of cabernet.

We stopped for gas and a leg stretch at Teslin, but I couldn’t find a credit card slot on the gas pump, so I had to go inside and ask to pre-pay, where the owner told me to go ahead and pump whatever I needed, then come back and just tell him how much I’d used. This truly is a foreign country.

We spent a few minutes in a local gift shop, where I had my picture taken with a moose and I bought a hand painted fridge magnet from a local artist.

Upon leaving Teslin, we crossed a bridge that was nothing but a metal grating, so you could see straight down through it to the moving water below. We continued East along the Alaska Highway for another two and a half hours, until we turned right and finally started heading South. We filled up on more gas at Junction 37 Services (literally just a seasonal gas station and a small RV park in the middle of nowhere), paid for it and then the owner went back outside to work on his boat.

The road south through British Columbia was noticeably different to the Alaska Highway. It was narrower, with far more twists and turns, plenty of rolling hills and far fewer cars. We could travel 15 minutes before we would see another vehicle coming from the other direction. The road was actually paved a lot better than some parts of the Alaska Highway, but the uneasy feeling of being literally miles from anywhere was a lot stronger. There was no cell service at all.

We stopped to take a few photos of a very curious fox that peeked out from the roadside, and it wasn’t shy at all. In fact, it walked right up to the drivers side door, ignoring both dogs barking at it, and sat and watched us for a few moments. We were later told that they’re waiting for food scraps, but of course we didn’t give it any.

The drive from Junction 37 to Jade City was along a completely unmarked road with no sign of other cars for miles. Also, the amount of large bugs in Canada was astonishing and you can see their blurry remains on the windshield in the video below. We had to scrape them off every time will filled up with gas, otherwise it would have become impossible to see anything at all.

Eventually we arrived at Jade City and our rest for the night, in the Jade Fever Cabina – a picturesque little cabin nestled in the woods, along with a couple of other cabins and a gift shop. Even though there was no running water and you had to use the outhouse behind the building, the cabin itself was awesome and really cozy. There was even a breakfast waiting for us when we arrived, but we had to provide our own dinner.

There was still no cell phone service, but luckily there was wi-fi available so we were able to call home using wi-fi calling, which worked out well. We set up the camp stove to boil some water, and opened a couple of dehydrated meals for dinner – I had a Kathmandu Curry and Scott went with a Mexican Quinoa Bowl, paired with a Yukon Brewing IPA. A perfect feast after another long day in the car.

We later found out that there is an entire 7-season television documentary about Jade City, so we’ll be watching that once we return home.

The CB radio remains silent.