We’re back on the U.S. side of the border in a cheap but not inexpensive motel in Eureka, Montana. Berck is sprawled out on the bed saying he’s sad we left Canada. He’s trying to figure out how to move there.

Yesterday we woke up in our relatively cheap and comfortable room in New Hazelton, BC. The lady at the front desk the night before had told us to have breakfast at the New Hazelton Cafe, but we’d found a menu for the B.C. Cafe in historic old Hazelton that looked really good. So we travelled off the highway and across an impressive one lane bridge you had to take turns crossing to get across the river. Like everything else in Canada this time of year, pretty much everything was closed, including, disappointingly, the B.C. Cafe. Hazelton is a First Nation community, which is what we call Indians or Native Americans. It looks pretty run down and shoddy, junk in the yards.

So we backtracked to the New Hazelton Cafe and Chinese Take Out and ordered some truly terrible eggs Benedict, hashbrowns, pancakes, and what I thought was some okay bacon but Berck disagreed. We got some sodas at the gas station across the street afterward to wash it down and then headed along “Maple Leaf” 16 again.

It was cloudy and sometimes rainy, and we could occasionally see that there were mountains around us but not often. Welcome to the Pacific Northwest. It started graupeling by the time we got to Prince George, a metropolis. Berck got gas at Canadian Tire, and we got some Canadian Tire money! We tried to find some wifi in order to see if we could find some donairs. In Canada the most prevalent fast food restaurant by far seems to be A&W Root Beer Stands, and all of them have free wifi. So we pulled up in the parking lot and did a search for donairs.

The story goes that a Greek started a restaurant in Canada selling gyros, but Canadians hated them. So he added barbecue sauce instead of tzadziki and called them donair, and now they’re a huge hit. The biggest chain is KOD, King of Donairs, but they’re mostly an east coast thing. Canadians seem to love barbecue sauce but don’t like to admit it. We got a bag of potato chips today that were “all dressed” flavor. They tasted exactly like barbecue chips.

We found a Greek Restaurant in downtown Prince George called Kalo Donair, which have the best donairs in town. They had a newspaper article tacked to their wall that said they were the best fast food in town, above Wendy’s and, of course, A&W.

The other big chain in Canada seems to be Boston Pizza. There was even a Boston Pizza in remote Fort Watson. It looks like a Fazollis expect probably not as good. I’m pretty sure there are no Boston PIzzas in Boston.

So we ordered two small donairs (which were pretty freaking big). Berck tried to get his with XXX sauce, but the girl behind the counter said her mum hadn’t made any that day. So he got Hades. I got Sweet, and she talked us into getting tzadziki as well. They were very good. They were typical gyros (minus the French fries) but with romaine lettuce and green peppers added. We munched on them as we headed down another road that warned that there wasn’t gas for a very long time.

We’d picked “Maple Leaf” 16 because the satellite showed that there were lots of white mountains on either side of it, but it was so cloudy and rainy that we couldn’t see much of them. We drove until dark and got to Blue River. The Blue River Motel houses helicopter pilots who work in the main business in town, which is heli-skiing. It was raining when we got there, though we couldn’t find the motel at first with all the piles of snow on either side of the road that were so high they obscured street signs. The price was right, and our room was tiny (a double that barely fit).

We asked the lady at the motel office if there were any restaurants open still. “You betcha! There’s the Husky and the restaurant at the Sandman Inn.” The Husky is a gas station. We went to the other one. The other one had beer. We also had poutine and Caesar salad, and Berck had a Caesar.

Berck complained about being hot in the middle of the night, so I told him to open the window, and then he went straight to sleep.