North through British Columbia - Alaska and Points North: Tips and Tales from the Road - page 48

The town square was filled with chainsaw carvings of bears and dogs. The bears were log
carvings, the dogs were real. When I set my fritter down on my chair for a moment, one of
the dogs tried to swipe it. I shooed him away. He shot me an evil look, squatted five feet in
front of me and let loose with a bigun. Good grief.
Reminded me of trying to find a bench in Paris to eat my falafel. Every place I tried to sit
put me into the immediate vicinity of stinky dog poop. It was so disgusting we went back
to our room to eat. Apparently they've cleaned Paris up since then so maybe I'll give it
another chance someday. Chetwynd was not like that at all, don't misunderstand me. Just
that one dog getting his revenge.
There are more than 40 chainsaw carvings throughout the town, a genuine lumber-town
art-form. The Visitor's Center has a walking-tour map to the carvings. If you are in the area
during June there is an annual chainsaw carving championship during which the carvers
haveonedaytocomplete acarving.Ifthatwerenotsufficiently challenging, ontheSunday
morning there is an even faster “Quick-Carve” competition.
Back on the road we take the Hwy #29 diversion that directly follows the Peace River up
to Fort St John. This means that on this trip we will miss Mile 0 of the Alaska Hwy at
Dawson Creek. The trade off is the gorgeous scenery along the Peace River and a chance to
check out BC's biggest hydro electric dam outside of Hudson's Hope. On a following trip
to Yellowknife we do catch the Mile 0 marker at Dawson Creek and follow the legendary
route from its inception to Fort St John, so we can now tick “Alaska Hwy end-to-end” off
the bucket list.
Whipping right along Hwy #29 we spy an RCMP vehicle at the side of the road - an obvi-
ous radar trap. Holding our breath we eased on past, only to realize it was a plywood cut-
out. Never seen that before so we backed up and took a picture. Creative use of resources,
that.