Beyond the Internet, temporarily

Copyright 2006 Lydia Hinshaw

TOAD RIVER, BC -- The Post Office is in the same building where we're eating lunch at a tiny diner. The Post Office has 30 mailboxes. We're at least 100 miles from a supermarket. For the price of lunch, we are getting to plug a computer into a fairly slow DSL cable, our first access to the Internet in two days.
We have hit the Alaska Highway at a good time. We're too late for winter weather, too early for road construction. In June, 1999, when I traveled this road by bicycle, there were nearly daily delays for road repairs, and frequent kilometers-long stretches of gravel and/or mud. There's been none of that so far this trip. Knock on wood.
This morning we've seen one young moose, about a dozen caribou and a handful of deer. The scenery gets better with each kilometer, but I think we might be here overnight if we tried to upload photos. In fact, I keep losing the connection, so I'd better publish this now.