We’re back in…Canada

After a good night’s rest we woke up at 6:30 and got going by 7:00. We’re crossing back into Canada today and will lose an hour so we wanted to get an early start. It’s more than 600km to Whitehorse so we’re well set. It was partly cloudy and partly sunny when we left Tok. It looks like it’s going to be a nice day. We brewed a nice mug of coffee before leaving the hotel and then set off. There was a 5 mile stretch of construction on the American side of the Alaska Highway which slowed us down a bit. We’re again driving on stretches of well wetted down gravel road and thus the Honda looks like pig again that walloped in the mud.

We crossed the border and saw the American customs checkpoint on the other side of the road but no corresponding Canadian checkpoint. Apparently the Canadian checkpoint is at Beaver Creek which is 20 or so km further into Canada. Oh well, since there are no roads anywhere except the Alaska Highway (AH), you can’t escape the checkpoint (unless you get off the road on foot and then, good luck!!). We cleared customs real quick like and then experienced the true north quality of the roads again. From the border until Burwash Landing, about 200km, we endured a potholed, rolling and pounding road surface. It’s a good thing we’re in a SUV that has a heavy duty suspension. Coming from the opposite direction we saw a steady stream of motor homes and campers bouncing up and down passing us slowly. Lucky for us 99% of this traffic was going to Alaska and we didn’t have to worry about passing these behemoths. Sometimes there were 6 or 7 of them in a convoy, each of them pulling a passenger car to boot. Can you imagine trying to pass these guys on this road? After enduring a couple of hours driving like this the road smoothed out considerably and we could make time again.

We saw a mother moose with calf today. They were grazing beside the road but on our approach they quickly bounded into the bush. We also saw quite a few trumpeter swans nesting in the numerous wetlands, ponds and small lakes. This area is mostly muskeg with lots of marsh, beaver ponds, creeks and lakes. The vegetation is low brushes, grass and the usual stunted black spruce and jack pine. I think this terrain is the cause of the bad road surface. The waves and potholes in the road surface are undoubtedly caused by frost heaving.

The mountains on either side of the AH are spectacular. We drove past Kluane National Park which is a wilderness preserve. The mountains are again snow capped and quite high. The interesting thing was that the moist Pacific air tries to climb this mountain chain and you can see heavy rain clouds and downpours in these mountains. Some of it crossed the mountain range to our (inland) side and we drove through some good showers.


About an hour before we reached Whitehorse, we saw a whole bunch of horses along the road. From the droppings, we could infer they had wandered across the road a few times. There must have been about 15 or so of them all spread out over a kilometer or so. They must have been free running horses because there was no sign of a farm or fenced off pastures anywhere. I just hope that none of these horses will get hit by a car or truck tonight. One of the reasons that a lot of herbivores like the shoulders of the highway is that here grows a lot of grass and succulent weeds. So, horses, deer, moose and elk can often be seen beside the road.

We again saw a lot of wildflowers along the road. Sometimes in such abundance it was hard to image how and why these flowers grow so well here. The most abundant purple flowers seem to thrive especially in the gravel where nothing else seems to want to grow.

We arrived in Whitehorse in good time around 4:20 and settled in our hotel pretty well. The temperature right now is 20 deg C. None of the hotels in the north here have air-conditioning. I guess you normally don’t need that here. However, it must be 30 deg C in our room right now. We’re hoping the temperature drops a goodly amount tonight.

Goodby Valdez...

Whether to weather the weather or not, that's the question. Or is it? Anyway, we woke to cloudy, threatening skies this morning and a typical temperature around 10 deg. We packed up our gear and got onto the road in record time. We had travelled but a few miles and lo and behold, the sun was trying its best to make itself known to us. Once we crossed the pass across the coastal mountain ridge, where it was very foggy due to the low hanging clouds, the weather started to clear right up and we were enjoying bright sunshine. It lasted for most of the morning after which the clouds returned and then just before we arrived in Tok, it cleared up again. So, if you don't like whatever weather you have, just wait a few hours and it'll be different. Anyway, enough about our favourite topic.

Last night around 8:30pm, we decided to explore the town of Valdez a bit more. We went to the harbour and strolled around there to look at the boats. The harbour area is very nice and there are a lot of restaurants and commercial places where you can charter boat excursions such as sea kayaking, fishing, etc. We observed a bunch of guys filleting their freshly caught catches of fish, mostly halibut. The harbour provides special public fish cleaning stations with troughs and running water to clean your fish catch. It even supplies carts to carry your catch from your boat to the cleaning stations. Very interesting for the landlubbers like ourselves. Of course there were a lot of gulls hanging around as usual looking for scraps to steal.

We also saw a bold as brass raven sitting on a fence. We took a picture of the lad but he didn't flinch an inch, just looked at us as if we owed him something or other. Being this far north, it really doesn't get dark hardly at all. When we go bed around 11 pm it is still very much light. It never gets totally dark at night actually even if the sun is down by 11:30 or so. Very strange indeed. Most hotels have fairly heavy drapes so that helps when going to sleep.

We once again enjoyed our road trip today. Although we were travelling the same road back to Tok, it all looks totally different when you travel in the other direction it seems. We took a few pictures of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline to show you the unique design of this gigantic construction.

When we got settled in our hotel in Tok, we found out that there have been extensive wildfires raging in the area since end May. Apparently there are about 700 firefighters here to fight the forest fires. As you can imagine, Tok being the major town here, the hotels are all booked full.

After dinner, we decided to drive out to where the fires are still raging. We saw the recently burned areas and the smoke hanging in and around the mountains here. We didn't get far enough though to see the actual fires, they were still quite a long way off. Here's a picture of what it most likely looks like though.

One of Annie's delights is the wide variety of wildflowers here. We've been taking pictures of all the wildflowers that we've come across. Near Valdez, we found many, many wild Lupen along the road. This is truly a unique thing. We've found that in BC, the Yukon and Alaska there are often abundant masses of different colourful wildflowers all along the roads that we travel.

Well, that's about it for today. Tomorrow we get back to Canada again and loose 1 hour.

On to Valdez, NOT Exxon Valdez though...

As usual, I'll begin my blog with the weather. We woke up to mixed clouds and sunshine today. The temperature wasn't too bad at 7 deg C, at least for Alaska. As the day progressed, the mixed sun, cloud and showers pattern persisted. The temperature eventually reached a peak of 15 deg. Not a bad day at all, especially when the sun peeked through the clouds.

We decided to make a trip today to Valdez, a port town of about 4000 on Prince William Sound. It's main claim to fame is the oil industry there and in particular the end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. This is where the oil is trans-shipped into oil tankers. In 1989, as you may well remember, The Exxon Valdez tanker grounded itself in the sound here and caused the biggest oil spill in North America, at least up to now. The current oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico makes the Exxon Valdez spill seem like few drops spilled from a bucket.

We have also decided to make this our farthest excursion into Alaska. We are finding that we have to drive quite long days in order to get everything that we planned into 5 weeks of travelling. Also, the costs here in the frozen north are more than we planned for. Food, gas and hotels are much more expensive than we had planned on. Originally we had planned to travel to Seward via Anchorage but Valdez is also on the coast and we thought it would be a good compromise.

We stopped beside a river shortly after leaving Glennallen. We hand washed our Honda right beside the river (see movie clip above). This was not because we couldn't afford to pay for a car wash, but we can't seem to find a car wash anywhere. We got most of the mud off so that at least we don't get our clothing filthy dirty every time we open a door or rear hatch to get to our stuff. We hope to put the car through a proper car wash in Valdez to get it really clean though.

We took a side trip along the Copper River which is very scenic. The mighty Copper River is one of the swiftest and most rugged rivers in Alaska. Twisting and cutting deeply through the Wrangell and Chugach mountains, it's 300 mile stretch of pristine glacier-fed waters are riddled by hundreds of rapids.

Every May, around the 15th, the first salmon of the season return to the rivers and streams of Alaska with the Copper River being one of the first. King, Sockeye, and Silver salmon embark on their long journeys up the 'Copper' to spawn and lay their eggs.

We stopped along the road to visit the Liberty Falls. The place is used as a state camp site and is beautifully situated to say the least. We met a couple of Alaskans who were kind enough to take a picture of the two of us. By the way, the only wildlife we encountered today was an owl who flew right across the road in front of us. How cool is that? Owls are nocturnal and are not usually seen during the day.

Since our detour didn't go anywhere, the road eventually turns into a dirt road and stops at some small settlement, we eventually turned around and got back onto highway 4. This road turned out to be just fabulous as far the scenery is concerned. We saw numerous wild mountain rivers, glaciers and waterfalls. We stopped at the Worthington Glacier and walked close to the foot of it. Although not as large as the Athabasca glacier in Banff National Park, it was still quite impressive.

Shortly after that, the road reached the top of the mountain pass at 2718ft and we began our descend to the port of Valdez. Oh, before I forget, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline runs parallel to Hwy 4 and is visible from time to time. This pipeline is a marvel of engineering. It runs about 800miles (1280km) from Prudhoe Bay on the Beaufort Sea to Valdez. Along some of the route, the pipeline (48" diameter) is raised above the permafrost. Heat sinks are attached every so often to dissipate any heat away from the supports that are sunk into the permafrost to prevent thawing of the permafrost.

Highway 4 wends itself through the Keystone canyon about 20 miles north of Valdez. The canyon is just an absolutely wonderful place to take pictures of the steep mountain sides dotted with waterfalls that fall into the river at the canyon floor. In particular, the Bridal Veil and Horsetail falls were breathtaking in their beauty. Just at the time we were there, the sun was shining, enhancing their beauty even more. Praise God for creating such a beautiful world for us to enjoy.

We got to Valdez in good time and got ourselves a hotel room. It seems that there is some sort of convention going on since it is almost impossible to find a room at this time. Luckily for us, there must have been a cancellation at this hotel and we booked it quickly. I tried to reserve a room last night in any hotel listed on line and couldn't because everything was booked solid. After plunking down $179.00 (US) and swallowing hard, we have a beautiful luxury room with kitchenette to enjoy. We went to the local grocery store to stock up on vittles again and brought home a couple a frozen meals and a salad. We'll made our own dinner and ate in for a change.

All-in-all, we had a very good day today, no nerve shattering, nail-biting trips along steep, slippery mountain roads without guard rails this time.

Looking for the road...

When we woke up this morning we were unfortunately greeted again by cool drizzly weather. Apparently there is a stationary low hanging around in this area which causes wet, cool weather to be around for the next few days. Being the optimist that I am, We're hoping to drive out of this weather system today.

After packing up the Honda, we drove to the ferry to get across the mighty Yukon River. We didn't have to wait very long before it arrived from the opposite bank of the river. There was no line-up so we drove right onto it. The ferries are free here courtesy of the Yukon Government. After getting off the ferry, we started on the "Top of the World" highway to the Canada-US border. The first few kilometers were pretty good, on a well paved road. However, after a short time we climbed to the top of the mountain ridge and the road disappeared into the low hanging rain clouds which translated into heavy dense fog. Shortly after getting our heads into the clouds, the road started to deteriorate as well. Instead of pavement, we were now mostly on gravel. The road basically runs along the mountain tops until well after crossing the border. So, the fog stayed with us for about 2 hours. We crossed into the US around 10 o'clock. This is the most northerly US Customs point apparently. The customs agent got us through without much fuss and we started on the American part of today's route. Well...we thought the road was bad in Canada, we were wrong, this road was truly a challenge. While the road in Canada was covered with gravel, this was just a dirt road, no gravel at all. The rain had turned the dirt to a glutenous tan coloured mud. We had to keep our speed way down in order not to slide off the road and off the mountain sides. On the plus side, we're now descending all the time and getting our heads out of the clouds, i.e. the fog disappeared. After about 20 miles, we came to the "town" of Chicken, population 35. Here we stopped for a coffee break. At this point, the road thankfully turned into a paved road and our troubles were more or less over.

It was just too bad that we were in the fog and clouds most of the time so far. Occasionally, we caught glimpses of the mountains around us which are really spectacular. On the Alaska side though we travelled from Boundary, population 5? (where we crossed the border) to Tok through a massive forest burn area. This forest fire destroyed thousands of square kilometers of forest. It took us a couple of hours of driving before we finally left this devastated area behind. As far as you could see, the mountain sides are covered with blackened stumps of burned trees.

Oh yeah, we saw a few cow moose, one with a calf, along the way as well as a fox. The fox was too quick and we didn't get a picture of him or her. That's all the wildlife we saw today. Still no grizzly bears or caribou :-(

By the time we arrived at Tok, we turned onto highway 2 to Glennallen where we planned to stop for the day. This road is paved, but the winters here do a real number on the highways. It sometimes feels like you're on a roller coaster. The road looks more like an ocean with waves.

On the plus side, the gas prices are a lot lower than in the Yukon. I filled up yesterday before leaving from Dawson this morning and had to pay $1.39/l for our regular gas. In Alaska, I'm so far paying about $3.68/gal which is a bit over $1.00/l if my arithmetic is correct. This might be expensive for Americans from the lower 48 states, but for us it's only a little more than we are used to paying at home.

Oh, did I mention that the weather got quite nice? By the time we got to Tok, the clouds started to lift somewhat and it got sunnier as we went on. Also, the temperature got to 19 deg C by the time we stopped in Glennallen, whoo hoo.

Wash me please!!

Looking for gold…

Today is our weekly rest day when we take a day off. We slept in this morning and then awoke to a drizzly cool morning. All day it drizzled and the temperature never got above 13 deg C. Well, so much for the weather, it is what it is, nothing much we can to about it anyway. Since the hotel has no wireless Internet, we went to the local Internet cafe and posted my blog from yesterday and fired off some emails. We also enjoyed a nice cup of coffee and muffin while we’re doing our computer stuff.

We did our laundry at the local RV campground since there are no commercial Laundromats here. We also did a bit of grocery shopping to replenish our larder.

After lunch we decided to visit a gold dredge that was situated about 12km up the Bonanza Creek. This was the creek where gold was first found in 1896. After the initial gold rush, the miners left for other areas in the Klondike and later on Alaska when gold was found in Nome. The Yukon Gold company in the early 1900’s decided to mine gold on an industrial scale and imported a number of dredges to mine the gold bearing gravel along a number of rivers and creeks. I won’t bore you with the details on how and when this took place. Parks Canada has preserved one of the largest dredges, No. 4, and we took an hour tour to see it and learn a lot of interesting stuff surrounded the dredge and how it fit in the local history of this region. These dredges were monstrous in size. The bucket chain that scooped the gravel contained 66 buckets, each weighing 2.5 tons. Each bucket scooped 16 cubic feet of gravel.

The interesting thing is that you find the tailings that were left behind, everywhere around here. These consist of miles and miles of rock and gravel piles dotting the landscape. Even today, there are still quite a number of prospectors mining for gold in the Yukon. These are hardy individuals and loners mostly just enjoying the lifestyle. The lady that runs the hotel we’re in has a partner who is somewhere in the bush mining for gold. He’s here from spring till early fall and then they go back to Toronto during the winter months. I guess together they make enough money to make a living. Of course it helps that gold prices are at record levels. BTW, there are quite a number of Ontarians working in the Yukon we found out. There is basically zero un-employment here and actually a shortage of workers.

It’s interesting to observe the people here as well. There are a lot of “characters”. Hippie types, bums, funny looking European tourists you name it and you’ll find it.

There is a mountain behind the town of Dawson called Midnight Dome. We traveled up to the top to enjoy the vista. You have a good view of the Yukon River and the town of Dawson below. On or about 21 June you can observe the Midnight sun here. It’s high enough that even though we’re a bit below the Arctic Circle, you can observe that phenomenon.

Also, Steve Martin and Jack Black are in town staying in the hotel beside ours. They’re shooting a movie here in Dawson apparently or at least part of a movie. Being the weekend, I think they may have flown back to Hollywood though. At least we haven’t seen either of them or any movie making activities.

Well, that’s it for now. Tomorrow we’ll cross into Alaska and hope to be able to blog from our hotel again.

Where’s all that gold???

We had a surprisingly good night’s sleep last night. We got up to a bit of sunshine and about 4 deg C. Not a bad day to start. We made our sandwiches and packed our gear and then set off again. Before leaving Whitehorse behind, we fuelled up the Honda and ourselves as well (McD’s senior coffees). After a few miles we said goodbye to the Alaska Highway and turned onto the Klondike Highway. Except for some small stretches, this road is quite good. There are plenty of rest stops again with washroom facilities. Also, there are numerous government campsites along the road again. These are serve-yourself primitive sites. For a very reasonable $12.00 per night you can stay on a nice camp site. They have no running water, showers or hookups for that price but they typically have nicely leveled sites with picnic tables, a covered picnic shelter, outhouses and fire rings. Usually they are located along a river or creek so you have plenty of water. Water needs to be boiled though for safety’s sake.

At Fox Lake we took a picture since the sight was just so beautiful with a snow capped mountain in the background. This was also the scene of a vast forest fire in 1998. We noticed quite a number of large areas where forest fires had devastated the forest. In a way, that’s not always a bad thing. Fires are needed to renew the forests and keep them healthy. I recall that the fire prevention program in Yellowstone Park had been so successful that the forest was getting to a stage where nothing lived anymore. It had turned into a dead forest with very little animal life and no new growth. Nowadays the ranger actually uses controlled burns to keep the forest healthy.

The only wildlife we saw today was a bobcat that crossed the road in front of us. He or she jumped into the woods and then stopped and looked at us over his or her shoulder and then jumped into the brush. Too bad we didn’t have time to take a picture. Bobcats and cougars are not seen very often and we were very lucky to see one.

At some points along the highway, the mighty Yukon River is visible. This is the third largest river in North America. At one time it served as a very important transport route to carry goods and prospectors from Whitehorse to Dawson City. According to the information available here, at one time more than 250 stern –wheelers plied the Yukon. We stopped a little further and observed the 5 finger rapids. At this point, quite a few unwary and inexperienced prospectors turned their boats over in the rapids and lost a lot of their gear.

We stopped at a Yukon Territorial campsite on the Tatchum Creek just to find out for ourselves what these campsites looked like. This was a very picturesque site and we had to take a picture of course. The creek flows into the Yukon River eventually.

Shortly before Dawson City, we saw the famous Klondike River. The road followed the river all the way to Dawson City, where the Klondike River joined the Yukon River. The Klondike is a good size river that flows very fast, in my estimation about 8km/h which would be impossible to canoe upriver. This is gold rush country all right. Everywhere you can still see pieces of rusting abandoned equipment. Also, the huge dredges that scooped up river gravel by the ton to extract gold have left enormous piles of gravel behind everywhere. This creates a kind of unique landscape but not exactly very nice.

Dawson City itself still very much looks like a far north gold rush town. The streets are unpaved dirt roads and the sidewalk, where present, are boardwalks. The tourist places are kept fairly nice and painted but there are also a lot of dilapidated buildings with a lot of unkempt yards intermingled as well.

I understand that’s the way it was in the heyday of the 1898 gold rush as well. The people seem very friendly and the motel we have is basic but nice and clean. Everything inside is finished in rustic pine. One thing we better get to is that here in the far north the prices are about 25-50% higher than back home. It’s not too hard to understand why. Everything has to be trucked or flown in here. The nearest major city and distribution center would be Edmonton, AB which is a 2500km one-way trip taking about 2 ½ – 3 days by truck.

One thing I haven’t talked about is the fact that we are getting closer to the Arctic Circle. That means that as we get closer to 21 June, the summer solstice, that hours of daylight are getting longer all the time. Last night in Whitehorse we went to bed around 11 o’clock and it was like 8 o’clock back home. In Dawson City, the farthest point north in Canada that we will go, we are at latitude 64deg 4min. If I remember my geography correctly, the Arctic Circle is at 66 deg 40min or so. So we’re only about 2 deg south of the Arctic Circle. As you probably know, once above the Arctic Circle around 21 June, there is still sunlight at midnight and then the sun starts to rise again. Here in Dawson City, we have a couple of hours of night and that’s about it.

Since we don’t have internet access in the motel, I’ll post this blog whenever I have a chance, till then, stay tuned.

Cold and wet again, brrr part 3...

As you can see by my last blog, it was warm enough for me to wear shorts. When getting up this morning, I naively thought it would be about the same as yesterday weather wise. It was overcast and it didn't feel too bad for a northern BC morning, about 8 deg C.

The lodge had gas pumps as well but when I checked the price, $1.70/l, I double-checked the amount in our tank and decided to wait until we were in Watson Lake, YT. I figured that in the Yukon they didn't have the carbon surcharge and being a much larger community, the gas would be less expensive. Sure enough, the gas price in Watson Lake was "only" $1.12/l.

Well, I got to tell you, as soon as we drove off from Muncho Lake, after checking out our hotel, it started to drizzle and shortly thereafter it started to pour. In addition, the temperature started to drop and reached an astounding 3 deg C. later in the morning. It was a good thing we were in a well heated vehicle. Even so, after awhile we stopped and I got my jeans out and changed into them for the rest of the day.

The scenery is still very beautiful despite the low hanging clouds and rain. We're in and out of the mountains all the time. The road is generally quite good. The first stretch from Muncho Lake was very twisty (I don't know if this a good word but you get the idea) and a little rough. A little later this got a lot better and the road was quite good. It is interesting to know that today's Alaska Highway follows the original ALCAN highway mostly. However, over the years it has been vastly improved with new bridges and straightening of curves and widening the roadbed. In some places though you can still see remnants of the old ALCAN highway that was constructed by the US Army Corps of Engineers in 1942 (total construction time: 9 months, total length: 2237km). An interesting factoid is that the US Army Corps was a black outfit, segregation still being in full force at that time.

Along the way we saw at least half a dozen bison, wild ones this time. We crossed Teslin Lake across the longest bridge on the Alaska Highway. Although we think BC is one of most beautiful provinces, we have a few beefs with its government. They should get on the ball with placing proper signs at the natural points of interest and please, please get with it and build proper rest room facilities along the main highways. It is a good thing we brought along a roll of toilet paper because we had to do our ablutions in bush sometimes when we couldn't find a commercial establishment. They seem more concerned with litter because every 10 km or so there was a litter bin. Alas, no outhouses even at those points. When in the Yukon, this is much better. At least when you cross a major river, you'll know the name of it and there are numerous rest stops with facilities along the Alaska Highway.

Finally we arrived in Whitehorse shortly after 4 o'clock. We had a really hard time finding a hotel room here. Finally we found a cabin for a reasonable price but it has no running water so we have to take showers in a shower/bathroom facility. A little quaint but we'll survive for one night. Quite a difference from our luxury Lodge last night but it's all good. Well, I'm done again for today, good night to all.

Trees everywhere…

It’s Tuesday the 2^nd of June today. It is a very auspicious day because today is my birthday. Too bad I plain forgot about it. After driving awhile, Annie suddenly remembered it. Anyway, the weather today is great. We woke up with bright sunshine and a 12 deg C temperature. The weather stayed very nice mostly with mostly sunshine and temperatures that reached 23 deg. In the late afternoon we encountered a few brief showers.

We started out from Fort St. John and the scenery is nice but quite monotonous for the next few hours. We can see the Rocky Mountains again in the distance on our left (west). The landscape is quite hilly with gentle rolling good sized hills. On either side of the Alaska Highway the northern boreal forest stretches to the horizon. There are numerous rivers and creeks everywhere. The boreal forest consists mostly of pine (jack pine) and poplars with a sprinkling of birch. If I remember correctly, the mature forest consists of pine which occasionally burns down due to forest fires. The burned areas are then quickly covered with poplars that grow quite fast but don’t usually last more than 10 -15 years. Slowly the jack pine establishes themselves again and crowd out the poplars. Then lightning strikes again and ignites the dry, resinous pine trees and the cycle starts all over again. There were also large areas where the pine trees were dying because of the pine beetle infestation. That was not a pretty sight seeing these large swaths of rust coloured trees everywhere.

Around 9:30 we started to enter the Northern Rocky Mountains. We’re again in the real mountains. The peaks are not quite as high as in Jasper National Park but still impressive. Also the mountain valleys we drive through are much narrower, in other words, the mountains on either side of the highway are much closer than before. The landscape is very rugged with almost vertical mountain sides, steep narrow canyons often carrying fast flowing mountain streams. Along the road usually runs a fast flowing river with many rapids. This stretch of the highway is very picturesque and we’re really enjoying the scenery here.

In Fort Nelson we fuelled up (the gas is now 120.9c/l, ouch!!) and then found the local museum. This was kinda neat. They had a large number of stuff from back to the beginning of 1900. There were all kinds of old machines, tools, pictures, etc. We spent almost an hour just browsing around. It just showed our age because a lot of these items were familiar to us since we used them way, way back in pre-history (at least that’s what our grand kids probably think, i.e. pre-computers, iPods, etc.).

Along the way, we saw quite a bit of wildlife again. Annie saw a mother black bear with two cubs. I was driving and was paying too much attention to the road and missed them. I turned off the road and back-tracked over a side trail but we couldn’t find them again. We did see a bear in a tree however who just ignored us and kept munching on the leaves. We also saw a moose come out of the tree line and cross the road in front of us and disappeared into a field. It was too fast for us to take a picture though. We also saw a herd of bison in a field. I think they were part of a bison farm though and not wild ones. We also saw a Stone Sheep, which is different again than a bighorn sheep. It's horns are curved less as you can see here.

We stopped for the day at Muncho Lake, a tiny community on Lake Muncho (surprise). This is a real jewel of a lake, nestled between the mountains. We stayed at the Northern Rockies Lodge, a really nice and expensive place to stay. Today, being my birthday we’re not counting pennies though, so dang the expensive here we are to stay for tonight. We’re staying in the main lodge, which is a modern log building. There is no city electricity or water or anything here. We’re about 3 hours driving from Fort Nelson, the closest large town. The lodge has its own generators to generate electricity. We’re on lake water I assume and have satellite TV and Internet. However, we decided not to hook up to the internet today because of the costs. I would have cost us $5.00 for the first 10 minutes and $0.50 for each additional minute. Thanks, but no thanks I’m drawing the line here. So, I’m typing my blog for today off-line and will post it with pictures tomorrow, which is now today I guess, hopefully.

All-in-all it’s been a very nice day again. I’m finishing my blog and Annie is watching Chicago-Philadelphia Stanley Cup game right now. It’s still 3-3 in overtime…. Oh…oh… the Flyers just scored the winning goal for this game and win 4-3. Well that’s all folks for today. Keep the emails coming and tell us something about what’s going on at home.

We're in redneck country...

This morning we slept in because I forgot to set the alarm clock. But, since we normally take showers at night, we still managed to be on the road by 8 am. Yes, it only takes us half an hour to dress and pack (I know, too much information already). The morning was nice and crisp, sunny and 3 deg C. However, today we're travelling north and we're expecting the temperature to go way up (go figure eh?). Indeed, when we got to Fort St. John, our final destination for today, the temperature was up to 20 Deg.

We took scenic highway 40 to Grande Cache and then to Grande Prairie. The road goes right through the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. We could see the snow topped Rockies quite often to the left of us which provided some spectacular views at times. We were also following the Smokey river for a long time. The rivers by now have lost their mountain wildness somewhat but are still fast and, to me at least, are very interesting.

We spotted a lot of mule deer does along the way and also a couple of moose (or is it meese?). So far we haven't spotted a grizzly yet but we're just starting on the Alaska highway today.

Just out of Grande Cache, which is a lovely town by the way, we spotted a working coal mine. This mine does surface stripping as well deep underground mining. The surface strip mining operation was quite interesting since they were working these giant machines on the slope of a steep mountain. Near the Smokey river, they had a processing plant where trains hauled away the coal to wherever. I understand this is high grade coal destined for the steel smelting industries.

We arrived in Grande Prairie around noon and stopped for lunch. Grande Prairie is a typical oil boom town with rapid growth and construction rampant everywhere. We were not too impressed with the hustle and bustle everywhere. New giant malls are sprouting up all over the place and such. The scenery from Grande Cache to Grande Prairie is not too interesting. We're in the Peace River valley which is pretty flat and farmed extensively. We couldn't wait to leave Grande Prairie behind. After awhile the landscape started to become more interesting and we crossed into British Columbia once again. Also, upon crossing into BC, we had to set our clock back another hour, we are now on Pacific Time which is 3 hours behind Eastern Time (Toronto). We have to cross one more time zone when we cross into Alaska.

We arrived in due time in Dawson Creek, BC where we stopped and took some pictures of the official start of the Alaska Highway, called "Mile 0". We visited to local tourism information shack and got some more maps and stuff. After a few miles we made a side trip over an original section of the Alaska Highway that crosses over the Kiskatimaw river. Here is an original curved wooden trestle bridge that is still in use. We decided to have a look at the bridge. This bridge was built in 1942 during the construction of the Alaska highway. For those of you with an interest in why and how the Alaska Highway was built, here's a good website: Alaska Highway . An interesting trivia factoid is that this is oil and gas country that we're travelling through. Everywhere along the highways you see natural gas pipelines and compressor stations. Some are burning off the sour gas, made famous by our eco-terrorist Wiebo Ludwig.

After crossing the bridge over the Kiskatinaw river, we crossed the Peace river near a town called Taylor. The interesting thing there was that the natural gas pipelines had to cross the river as well. Since it is too dangerous for the natural gas pipes to share a bridge with vehicles, they constructed a special suspension bridge just for the gas pipelines some ways off to the regular bridge. The white and red striped pipes are the gas pipelines.

We arrived in Fort St. John shortly after crossing the Peace river, which is a substantial river at Taylor by the way. Fort St. John is another boom town, albeit smaller than Grande Prairie. We found a very, very nice hotel here for a very reasonably price ($79.00). The tourist season has definitely not started yet and that works in our favour.

As you probably saw by the blog heading, we are definitely in redneck country here. Regular cars are in very short supply here in northern BC and Alberta and outnumbered by at least 5 to 1 if not more. All you see is trucks and pick-up trucks. The pick-up trucks are all big, more often than not with dual rear wheels. The typical male drives a giant Dodge RAM pickup truck with dual wheels and a V8 or Cummings diesel.

The other thing we had to endure was lots of road construction. This time we had to wait at each road re-construction site 5-10 minutes before being allowed to continue. Hopefully as we get further away from the build-up areas we won't be pestered too much by this summer time phenomenon (oh.. I sure like using big words of more than two syllables).

Well folks, I hope you stick with me as we travel along. Your comments and emails are always very much appreciated as it keeps us in touch with ya'all.