Ice and This Way to Alaska

Day nine – Saturday, August 1st

One of our favorite John Denver songs begins, “Up in a meadow in Jasper Alberta, two men and four ponies on a long lonesome ride.” And here we are in Jasper, Alberta. It is so beautiful, we are feeling like we need to find some new words to describe the beauty: breathtaking, exquisite, peaceful, rugged, magnificent, wondrous, grand, awesome, fabulous….

The day was spent leaving Banff National Park and heading in the adjacent Jasper National Park. God bless the people who in the early 1900’s saw the need to set aside and protect these wilderness areas. The drive through the northern section of Banff National Park into Jasper National Park is along the Icefields Parkway, listed as one of the most scenic routes in North America, and they aren’t kidding. At every turn there are more lovely mountains and more amazing glaciers and icefields. (Patti still can’t really tell the difference between these two, but apparently, glaciers move and parts of them get force off the edge and fall off, while icefields just sit there and eventually melt.) Anyway, we drove much of the later morning through these lovely drives. Wow!

Then we came to the Jasper Park Icefields Center where you could both learn more about the glaciers and, for a fee, be driven out onto the Athabasca Glacier. We didn’t pay to go out, but did hike to the toe of the glacier and have the chance to go a tiny ways out onto it. They did quite a job of scaring people about safety issues including letting us know that the last three rescue attempts to pull tourists out form being caught inside the ice chasms, failed and the people died. Patti was properly frightened by this! It was also despite it being a warm day, FREEZING on the ice, and highly windy. It was impressive, but not a place you’d want to hang out all day. Meanwhile, Dick found the ice fascinating. He had been here nearly 35 years ago and, although trying to prepare himself mentally for the change, was shocked to see that the glacier had retreated over300 yards during those intervening years. It is still several miles long and, at its thickest point, over 2000 feet thick. It was much larger, it was over a mile longer and now has lost over 60% of its mass. Dick walked up the steep surface of the glacier being careful to avoid anything that looked fragile. Water was running down channels in the surface of the glacier and, primarily, out from under the glacier in two major streams. We knew we were looking at the source of the Athabasca River.

Once back on the road we had to stop for a traffic jam. We knew to look for animals at such events. Sure enough, there were two sheep trying to cross the road. They looked like our familiar Big Horn Sheep but their horns stuck out more from their heads. We learned that these were Stone Sheep. Later, as we were leaving the park we saw a whole herd of similar sheep, primarily females and young causing another traffic jam, in the rain, as they milled around the middle of the road licking something from the surface. We never did find out what they were licking. Dick theorized that the rain might have brought something up to the surface on the road that the sheet liked to eat, because they were sure mobbing the road! We also began to see elk in several small herds. One included a mother and calf. The beauty of all these animals is incredible! Wow!

Jasper Park is another fantastic place, the largest in size of all the Canadian national parks in the Rockies, and we had the chance to see some more beautiful countryside, including the Athabasca Falls lovely, but filled with tourist bus people! Not our favorite way to see beauty. The highlight was a drive to the Miette Hot Springs, a commercial hot springs pool where the water (the hottest in the Canadian Rockies) is naturally heated by the earth. When we arrive at the bottom of this really out I the middle of no where valley, there were over 200 people soaking in the both pools, despite the fact it was raining! It felt great on the sore muscles.

Leaving the park, grabbing a quick dinner, then put us on the lookout for a campsite for the night. We had already heard that there were no sites to be had in this huge National park, due to it being a holiday weekend. As we approached our turn from the main highway, we both got smiles on our faces as we saw the sign inviting people to use our chosen route as the Scenic Route to Alaska. As we drove along this deserted highway at dusk we began to see deer. First it was a herd of Mule Deer and then White Tail Deer. Our wildlife treats continued. We found that the filled up campgrounds wasn’t true just in the park, but in every campground we drove by for the next two hours. Luckily, we were wide-awake and we are up North, so it doesn’t get dark until after 10pm (great late sunsets, though!), but we were ready to find somewhere to stop. Dick, with his excellent eyes, spotted an unofficial campground, “user supported” where people could just pull into it and camp for free. No official sites, no bathrooms, no park rangers…. but a safe place to stay. Another camper affirmed that he had come from the North and there was also nothing available up there. So we stopped, got things set up in our ever-trusty min-van and were sound asleep within a half hour. Another fun and successful day.


Day 10 – Sunday, August 2nd

And so, at long last, today is the day that we FINALLY get to the beginning of the famed Alaskan Highway. For those of you who don’t know the history it goes something like this. In the early 1940’s when WWII was raging along, the U.S. got really scared that the Japanese would come and attack our territory, Alaska (not a state until 1959). Pearl Harbor happened and everyone got really scared. What if Alaska and Canada were next? The government got especially worried that if we were battling there, it would not be possible for troops to be kept supplied with what they needed, so they decided to do a really quick job in 1942 and built a highway starting at Dawson Creek, British Columbia and getting all the way to Alaska. The Army Corp of Engineers, many soldiers as well as many American civilians were called into action. One of these civilians was Patti’s grandfather, Einer Christensen, who went from Tyler MN in 1942 and helped to build the Highway. It was a nightmare to build, with permafrost and swampy areas, massive mosquitoes, and, don’t forget about the winter! There was lots of controversy that happened including getting the U.S. and Canadian governments to cooperate, deciding on which of several routes was best, trying to keep the road close by to various air bases. They built the first “pioneer road” in 8 months, but then spent the next couple of years upgrading and fixing it was temporary bridges went out, some of the grades were as steep as 24%, lots of the road worked well on in winter but not when the spring thaws actually came.

This is the road that we will now drive for the next 6 days. That road was, of course, really rough when it was first made, only trees cut down and dirt…. later upgraded several times by the Canadians. By now, it is still a little rough in some areas, but mostly, paved and a pretty darn nice road mostly used by civilian travelers since 1949.

Our road today led us out of the foothills of the Rockies back onto the prairie. When driving on the prairie in southern Alberta we had seen fields of yellow flowers. Here they were again. Dick had correctly guessed that they were canola plants. We stopped along one field and got a closer look. It is hard to imagine that the oil we use for cooking comes from tiny little seeds from these plants. The flowers are certainly beautiful.

As we were driving along, looking forward to entering British Columbia, we were struck by the sight of a huge beaver looming along the side of the road. We do mean huge, over 15 feet tall and 28 feet long. It turns out the people of Beaver Lodge, Alberta commissioned this statue to promote civic pride and to attract people to their town. Of course, we had to stop for a closer look.

Because we had driven so far last night, we had a shorter drive today. As we crossed into British Columbia, we remembered to change our watches again. Late morning brought us to the destination of the day: Dawson Creek BC. As we came into town, we saw signs saying “Welcome to Dawson Creek, Mile Zero of the Alaskan Highway, and “Mile Zero City, Where the Adventure Begins. Mile zero refers to the way that they kept track of the miles on the highway when they were building it. Mile zero is in the middle of Dawson Creek, while the final mile is either at Delta Junction or Fairbanks, about 1500 miles away, depending on who is declaring the other end of the highway.

At the center of town is the official start of the Alaskan Highway. As Dick stood near the sign and the Mile Post “0,” he felt a wave of emotion sweep through him. He has been dreaming of this experience since he was a child. He has so wanted to go to Alaska and do it via this highway. Now it is happening!

We arrived with enough time to go to the Visitor’s Center and The Alaska House, two museums that allowed us to get into the spirit of traveling on the Alaskan Highway. We watched a wonderful hour long movie on the history of the highway from the 1920s until 1992. We could have watched an additional PBS special, but we’d already seen that one. Patti had the chance to create a little video clip for the Alaskan’ Center video archives, where they had a special section for families for veteran’s of the Alaskan Highway to share what they knew of their relative’s experiences. Cool! We both are soaking this up, the history is so much fun, and it is so exciting.

Dick was reflecting on how it must have felt during the U.S. pioneer times when people in wagon trains gathered from all around in Independence, Missouri heading West to the Oregon Trail. In a similar way, people from all over gather here to start up to Alaska.

We checked into our hotel and grabbed a quick dinner at a local pub. The owner, Diane, has been in the restaurant business for 30 years and has owned this pub for 6 years. She was a great source of info for us, including the fact that she had never driven to Alaska, but that many local people do and it wasn’t considered just a crazy tourist thing to do but a beautiful one. She hopes she’ll get a chance one day to go do it herself. She took good care of us and gave a nice send off on our journey.
In the morning, we will pack up and start up the Alaskan Highway. Hooray!!