May 25, 2015

We reached Watson Lake, Yukon just before lunch time. The air here is thick with smoke due to a large forest fire burning northwest of town. Watson Lake is famous for its Sign Post Forest. A homesick soldier working on the Alaskan Highway back in 1942 started the Sign Post Forest with just few signs about home and how far from home they were. Now there are over 80,000 signs from all over the world. Needless to say, we added one of our own to the forest. Watson Lake also has a museum and movie theater presentation about the Northern Lights which we plan to see once laundry has been completed. Being able to take a hot shower was pure heaven!

From this point we will leave the Alaskan Highway and head northwest on the Campbell Highway. This is a much more primitive road but is the shortest route to Dawson City. When we stopped and asked about it today, we were told it had just reopened after being closed by a washout. Before we leave tomorrow, we will be checking again to make sure no fires have closed the road. There is only one fuel stop along this route and it is a distance that will not allow for backtracking with the amount of extra fuel we can carry.

This afternoon, we plan on walking around Wye Lake here in town. Maybe we will see some wildlife. I will pass on bears though. We saw 6 more black bears this morning. They all appear to be addicted to dandelion flowers. They paid no attention to traffic nor photographers as long as those bright yellow blossoms were within close reach. We stopped at the Whirlpool Canyon rest stop on our way to Watson Lake. This overlooks Whirlpool Canyon on the Laird River. Wow, was that dramatic. The debris pile contained enormous logs, whole trees, roots and all in the corner of this huge whirlpool.

We caught this fellow in the middle of his morning dust bath!

This will probably be my last post until we reach civilization once again in Dawson City in about three or four days.  We will be detouring up the Dempster Highway as far as the northern circle before finally reaching Dawson City.  So far the adventure has been everything we could hope for and more.

May 24, 2015

Upon leaving Summit Lake this morning we happened on a nice herd of stone sheep. Several big rams were delighted to pose for us on the roadway and seemed totally unaffected by the attention. Now I don’t know if this is a statement about man/female attitudes but the females stated well away from us and watched us warily from the cliffy outcrop. The stone sheep are much grayer than our big horn sheep in the US Rockies.

This drive from Fort Nelson on has been through spectacular scenery, lots of topographic and lovely vistas. Unfortunately, the air is thick with smoke from numerous forest fires raging through British Columbia and Yukon Territory. It does create misty photographs but does not do justice to the beautiful views.

This section of highway is amazing, steep hillsides with cliffs of tortured limestone, raging rivers, the Trout, the Racing, the Toad and the Laird, plus vast deltas flowing from narrow steep canyons in the mountains. Muncho Lake, “Big” Lake in Kaska, lives up to its name. Teal water laps at the base of sheer cliffs. This stretch of highway was the most difficult during construction. It required blasting the roadway from the cliffs. Occasionally, heavy equipment vanished into its icy depths. Caribou are found in the area, but not by us. Moose have also remained quite shy.

Bison have been reintroduced into this area and these seem to being doing quite well judging by the “calling cards” they have left along the road. We finally came across a small herd just south of the bridge over the Laird River. One young male was pleased to pose for us, the remainder of the group simply lay in the shade and took siestas. Another male was at the gate to the Laird Hot Springs Provincial Park and was quite photogenic.

Here are a couple of ewes just chillin' in the morning sun and soakers at Laird Hot Springs.

Laird Hot Springs was such a delight. The water is quite hot, 100 degrees mid pool hotter toward the spring entrance. The area is full of mud flats, ferns and wild flowers. The springs are a very popular stop along the highway. We camped for the night but others just stopped for an hour or two and drove on. We would stop here again in a heartbeat. The campground is wonderful with more privacy than we have seen at other provincial parks.

May 23, 2015

We are camped for the night at Summit Lake which happens to be at the highest pass along this Alaska Highway…4250 feet. It is a lovely spot but very popular with locals as well as travelers. We had hoped to see stone sheep during our drive today. We were skunked in that regard but happened to see 4 black bears, a momma and her cub, and two solo bears all within 5 miles. They were very healthy and robust. Add to our animal count two marmots beside the roadway. The moose continue to elude us.

We began our travels today with a visit to the Kiskatinaw Bridge. This is one of the original bridges along the Alaskan Highway built of wood and still in use. It is unique because it curves in a 9 degree arc as is crosses the Kiskatinaw River. When the concrete pillars were poured in November of 1942, an unusual cold snap hit. The pillars had to be protected from freezing by being wrapped and kept at 72 degrees until the cold snap ended. Just one more challenge faced by the builders of this road.

The highway drops into the Peace River gorge in a dramatic fashion. The highway sign reads “extreme grades ahead” which was a little bit of an understatement. The crossing of the Sikanni River was also dramatic but not as breath taking as the Peace River.

We stopped in Fort Nelson for lunch and totally missed seeing the largest chopstick factory in the world! Then it was on to the winding climb up the western side of Steamboat Mountain, which is where we saw the bears. A little rain fell on our heads then about 5 p.m., the sun popped from behind the clouds and off we went with cameras to capture the area.

The entire area we drove through today was heavily timbered with fir, spruce, black cottonwood, alder, larch and aspen to name a few. The Alaskan Highway has been an easy road to travel. We can now see why it is so very popular with RVers.

Below are photos of the Kiskatinaw Bridge and Mama Bear and her cub.

Dawson Creek is quite an interesting town. There is a wonderful visitors center with a little museum. Next door, in an old grain elevator, is an art gallery with a display of photos taken during the construction of the Alaskan highway in 1942. It was an amazing engineering and physical feat and was completed in only 8 months. Tomorrow we will actually start up this historic highway.

Outside of the gallery is one of the Mile Zero markers. This one commemorates the construction of the Alaskan Highway in 1942. The US and Canadian governments shared the cost and the US provided the manpower and engineering for the project. It was quite an undertaking.  The second Mile Zero marker is a couple of blocks away and is the official mileage marker for the beginning of 1200 miles of highway through the Canadian wilderness. After the road was turned over to the Canadian government, it became a great adventure to travel this route and it still is today.

Below are photos of both mile markers and the grain elevator art gallery in Dawson Creek.

May 21, 2015

It seems they do a lot of wildlife ranching here in Canada. We passed an elk ranch not far south of Edmonton.  While the landscape in still flat, rolling country, there are more trees now, aspen and conifers. The soil is very rich looking. I wonder if I can sneak some home for my garden? This area is rich in gas and oil but it does not have the frenetic traffic of the Midland/Odessa area in Texas. Perhaps this is due to the lower speed limits and more polite drivers!

Through the day, the land climbed to a plateau then began morphing into foothills with heavy timber. Highway 43 is a fast route northwest of Edmonton. It is a divided highway with 4 lanes almost all the way to British Columbia. In fact it was so fast that we decided to go on to Dawson Creek after arriving at our original stopping point, Grand Prairie, at 1:30 in the afternoon. We did run into our first highway work in Grand Prairie then again in Dawson Creek. So far we cannot complain about the waits.

Again our early start put us into Dawson Creek this evening where we will stay another day to rest up, do laundry, shop and play tourist. Dawson Creek is the actual start of the Alcan Highway and so is the true beginning of our Alaska adventure at Mile Marker Zero.

We are self-contained campers in our rig and that is proving to be a plus tonight as the campground, Northern Lights, had a water main break. We were really looking forward to a nice hot shower but that is a no go this stop. Tomorrow we get to sleep in and play tourist, both of which will be great!

We left Shelby early to avoid traveling with at least 8 other RV’s heading to Alaska. We thought the time crunch at the border would be extensive with that many vehicles. I am sure we will run into some of them later in our trip. Crossing the border at Sweetgrass/Coutts was easy peasy. The only hiccup occurred when we both thought the agent asked if we were together. When I answered “Well, yes, we are married”. The agent looked confused. We looked confused.  Then we realized what she asked was, “first time in Canada?” We all had a good laugh. The currency exchange lady on the US side thought we were crazy getting small bills for our trip but the provincial campgrounds are cash only and usually run about $11 Canadian so there was a method to our madness.

Alberta is flat, rolling prairie country with massive wheat fields, occasionally dotted with pump jacks and apparently, dinosaur tracks. The cattle all seem to be red Angus. To the west snowcapped mountains paralleled our route north. We will enjoy them during our return trip. Our stop in Lethbridge allowed us to buy a few groceries we thought could not be brought across the border. We were only asked about liquor and cigarettes. Of course, our next crossing could be different. Lethbridge is a nice town with every fast food venue and all the shopping you could possibly desire. 

Lunch was at an A&W in Claresholm, south of Calgary. It was pleasant to find that A&W is so very popular up here and sinful to have that creamy root beer in a frosted mug!

Every time we used the credit card, we were asked if our card was chipped. Finally, we had to ask about it. Canadians do not have credit cards as we know them. Theirs are really more like debit cards embedded with a chip containing all their information and are used with a pin number. So while we have no trouble using our credit card, we cannot pay at the pump when getting gasoline. It is a minor inconvenience but for the privacy it is priceless.

Verizon roaming in Canada is a crazy beast. If you have a smart phone, it locks you out of all your apps. Contrary to what US Verizon told me, I am unable to receive texts and can only receive and make voice calls. It would have been quite nice to know this beforehand. I ended up putting my phone into airplane mode so that we could listen to our audio books which are on my phone.

While Calgary is a big city, the through traffic is routed around the edges making it so simple to get through town. Now we have stopped for the night in Red Deer, Alberta at the Westerner Campground. Everything is rodeo oriented around here. So ends our first day in Canada. Tomorrow we should be in Grand Prairie. By the way, the weather has been extremely nice though a little windy. We really cannot complain.

I was unable to post this last night. The RV park had no free wifi but it did have an ethernet port. My computer does not have an ethernet port...somedays one just cannot win!

After a more reasonable start this morning--no mowers--we had a wonderful trip through Idaho and Montana. It rained all night but it was relatively light though the gray skies hung around most of the day. Just north of Idaho Falls we spotted a huge herd of bison. It must have been a bison ranch, still it was exciting to see them. We also saw several different groups of pronghorns throughout the day.
Ancient lava flows crisscrossed the flat, rolling landscape before morphing into wheat fields.  We could see sand dunes nestled against a low mountain range to the east.

Montana has beautiful scenery that we will have enjoy at a future time. Butte, of course, sparked my interesting being a mining brat. It is very intriguing. The Missouri River is absolutely beautiful. Its crystal clear waters are a far cry from the muddy waters that course across Missouri.  And the canyon the river flows through is amazing with its volcanic structures.  I only whimpered as we sped by the turn off to Glacier National Park. So much to see in this great country of ours.

Tonight we are in Shelby, Montana. We will be crossing into Canada tomorrow morning. We have already met another Alaska bound individual camping here for the night.  It is a quest! The flag is at the Veterans Memorial in Shelby, fitting for our last night in the US for a couple of weeks.

Cloudy skies greeted us this morning in Kanab then accompanied us on most of our day's drive. We left Kanab much earlier than we had planned. Who mows their lawn at 6 a.m.? Anyway, we continued on Hwy 89 through some very beautiful country. I can tell you now, we will be back to spend some time here. The route lead us pass many beautiful sites, including Bryce Canyon and Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park.

Once we hit Interstate 15 north through Salt Lake City, the scenery was lovely but we fired up the audio book and focused on just heading north. The skies remained gray until we crossed into Idaho when patches of sunshine graced us. However, we then picked up storm that paced us all the way. It began to gain on us about Pocatella. Now we sit in Idaho Falls by the Snake River waiting for this storm to finally catch us. At least it was kind enough to let us get set up and cook some dinner before making an appearance.

Tomorrow night. we should be in Shelby, Montana. We will then cross into Canada Wednesday morning.

Even though this is our third day, I feel our adventure really started this morning as we finally headed north. Tonight, we are in Kanab, Utah having driven through Arizona. All the country we traveled through today, was country we either had not seen in a very long time or country we had never seen so it was exciting and fresh and wonderful to our eyes.

We began in Globe, Arizona driving along Roosevelt Lake into the Payson area. The first thing I thought was entertaining was a sign that read "Mad as Hell Ranch". This set off all manner of speculation as to what the owner had to be mad about. Are they still mad? Why were they mad? Do they mean "mad" as in crazy? But since we were driving through the area of the Tewksbury/Graham feud, I decided they still were fighting that feud!

The San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff were lovely with Mt. Humphrey still clad in snow. It was unbelievably hard to pass all the wonderful and enticing venues...Sunset Crater, Wupatki Ruin and the North Rim entrance to the Grand Canyon...but it would be too easy to lose our focus on Alaska. We did, however, stop at the Navajo Bridge for photo opts. What a lovely spot. And after lunch, we stopped again by the Vermillion Cliffs to look for condors. We luckily spotted three soaring on the thermals.

Tomorrow will be even harder as we drive through Utah, one of our favorite states. I guess we will just have to wear blinders!

The first day of our great adventure was filled with high wind and dust all the way to Tucson. Plus the law enforcement people were out in full force but then so were the crazy drivers. By the way, it remained cool all day, from Far West Texas to Tucson. It now appears we will be driving through snow as we head north. We have planned for all weather types so we have shorts through insulated jeans to cover heat through snow. We have jackets of all weights and types so we can layer for colder weather and still survive warm weather too. Rain boots, flipflops, tennies and hiking boots make up our footgear. Now we think we are prepared for all Alaska can throw at us!

Today, we are going north to Globe/Miami area of Arizona. Our goal is to be at the Canadian border by Wednesday then the true adventure will begin.

Test

May 6, 2015

We will be heading up to Alaska in a very short time now. The packing is about half done. The “to do” list is finally showing more check marks than new items. We did a couple of upgrades on the camper and did some major organizing within the camper since extra space is at a premium. Canadian cell service has been set up.

Now, we are finally allowing ourselves to become excited about the trip. So our next post will be from the road. This is simply a test to see if posting from Word is an option.