Day: February 17, 2026

Prince George to South Hazelton, BC

September 10, 2025

After I left Chetwynd I drove between some smaller mountains in the Rockies chain and was then in open land for quite a while until I reached Prince George. I don’t have any photos to post of Prince George. I can tell you it is a much bigger city that some of the small towns I have been in lately (76,000 people) and I spent my time there preparing for my drive to Alaska.

I bought some more bear spray (I had one older can from 2021, and 2 new ones that I bought before I left Durham, but I bought two more cans). It occurred to me that as soon as you use one you will need another, and from what I had been told, once I got on the road to the Alaska Highway I would likely see lots of bears.

I also went to the Visitor Centre as this was the last big town on the route I was going to take. I asked them for maps and any other information I might need about driving up Hwy 31. I also went to the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) station in town. They are the national Canadian police force. I spoke with someone there about my plan to drive the isolated highway north, and who to try and reach in the event of a breakdown or emergency. They assured me that there would be a few places to get gas, though they advised me to have cash on hand because they may not have internet access to process my credit card.

Finally, although I had tried to clean and organize my car while I was in Grande Prairie, I put away my warm weather clothes and got all of my cold weather gear out. I made sure I had layers and a warm blanket in the passenger compartment. I had already stocked up on water and bought some fresh fruit and munchies to have for the ride.

It was a nice morning when I left Prince George to head west to my final overnight stop in British Columbia. It would be about a 5 hour drive.

I drove through lots of open land and went through many small towns:

That sign told me that as much of British Columbia as I had seen between the US border and here, I was only half way north!

I stopped in the small town of Houston for lunch. Right across the highway was the world’s largest fly fishing rod:

This area has lots of waterways which provide copious amounts of trout and salmon.

After driving most of the day in open land I started to see mountains in the distance. Those are coastal mountains which, as that description implies, stretch all the way up the coast and are one of the reasons it is difficult to drive from here to Alaska. You will see tomorrow that I am actually not that far from part of Alaska but there are no roads that go that way.

Those tall mountains are just on the other side of the town of Smithers.

And the mountain on the far right is home to the Hudson Bay glacier:

My Airbnb was in the small town of South Hazelton. They had chickens and goats behind their house and I could watch them from my living room.

And they had a big dog to keep any predators at bay.

I would try and get a full night’s sleep as I will have a 9+ hour drive tomorrow.

Chetwynd, BC – Post 2 of 2

September 8, 2025

Here are more of the chainsaw creations I saw as I passed through Chetwynd on my way to Prince George:

And a closeup of the octopus arms:

The last one I have to post is in three parts, top to bottom. It is called “Peace, Love, Monkeys”

There was one other item in Chetwynd which caught my eye. This large painting was on the side of a recreation center.

It consists of a series of many smaller square panels. I was rather surprised when I saw the sign that appeared next to it:

I find it rather hard to believe but I know the Guinness people are sticklers for authentic claims so it must be true!

I had more driving to do so I got back on the road. Chetwynd is in the foothills east of the Canadian Rockies. It didn’t feel like I was going over major mountains, and I saw some mountains, but it didn’t seem like they were that big. In fact, for much of the drive from Hinton to Grande Prairie to here the tree-covered mountains I saw reminded me of parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia or North Carolina. It was such a beautiful morning east of the mountains I was quite surprised to find myself in a haze when I got to the west side.

Chetwynd, BC – Post 1 of 2

September 8, 2025

I didn’t realize it at the time but the last two nights I spent in Grande Prairie would be my last visit to Alberta province during this trip. My destination today will be Prince George, BC and I will cross the Canadian Rockies for the last time.

The drive to Prince George was to be 6 hours but I encountered an unexpected diversion along the way. Nothing wrong at all, but something that had not popped up on my radar and I found VERY interesting.

Chetwynd, a small town of about 3,000 people, is home to the Chetwynd International Chainsaw Carving Championship. As I was driving in to town I saw lots of these lined up on both sides of the highway, and a concentration of them once I got to Tim Horton’s to stop for coffee. I went back to the “Welcome” sign where the first two I posted were and started taking pictures.

These are all chainsaw carvings, done over a number of years. I will explain shortly.

The competition is held the second week of June and 12 carvers are invited to participate – 4 from Canada, 4 from the United States and 4 from other countries around the world. Each carver is provided with 40-50″ diameter, 8 foot tall piece of western red cedar. They have 35 hours to create their entry.

I don’t know how that 35 hours is spread out, but I would think each artist is probably allowed 10-12 hours per day to work, with meal breaks, and then given time to sleep. The contest runs 4 days, and on the last day there is a 90-minute “quick carve” contest, with those works being put up for auction. The major pieces stay in Chetwynd and are scattered all over town. It seems that the artists have free reign over what they can produce, and there is an amazing variety of works on display.

Here are two shots of the detail on the front of the dragon shown above.

All of this is done with chainsaws, and they are gearing up for the 20th annual competition in June, 2026. I believe technology has improved to the point where woodworkers have smaller, more precise saws for detail work, and some of the pieces I saw had just a stunning amount of fine detail.

I was a little bit challenged with the bright sunshine, and some of my photos didn’t turn out too well because the objects were backlit. I tried to move around to get the best shots.

I will have more photos in the next post. You may also Google the town or contest name to see lots more photos online.

I was really blown away by them, and wished I had more time to spend in town to seek out more of them. Some of the ones I saw were done as far back as 2007 and I didn’t look at all of the signs indicating who the artist was, where then were from and what year the work was produced.