A Riverboat Steamer and The State Fair

Day 16 – Saturday, August 8th

We woke up early in our parking lot home at Pioneer Park. It was getting light but the world looked very white. A thick fog had settled over Fairbanks. We could barely see the row of buses parked 50 yards away. We debated whether it was a good day to take a steamboat ride but decided to have faith that it would work out.

We got moving because we needed to catch the steamboat Discovery by 8:15am. Steamboats? You ask. Why steamboats? Did you know that at one time, there were over 150 steamboats in Alaska and the Yukon? They were one of the main means of transportation. Here is what they say about this tour: “Welcome aboard! Your three-and-a half hour cruise will take you into the heart of Alaska and the heart of a family who has made the rivers of Alaska a way of life for four generations. You will see a bush plane taking off from a "bush" style runway, visit the home and kennels of the late four-time Iditarod winner Susan Butcher, and gain insight into the ancient Athabascan Indian culture. Alaskan Native guides who have worked and lived in Alaska will take you on a personalized tour of the Chena Indian Village.” How could we pass that up? Actually, it sounds like it could be a lot of hype, but we had this tour recommended by a guy from Anchorage who told us that this was the best tourist travel thinking not just in Fairbanks, but anywhere in Alaska. Okay then!

The smoke had cleared quite a bit BUT it was a truly foggy day. What great day for a boat ride!? As it turns out, it still was. It was too foggy for the bush pilot demonstration, but the host/narrator was excellent and the riverboat was staffed by local and Native Alaskans who were great. Before we left, Patti got to have her picture taken with the actual dogsled that champion musher Susan Butcher used.

This was really an educational trip where we got to hear about what it’s really like to live here, and especially what was it like for the Indian people who have lived here for over ten thousand years. The native village was really wonderful, and we also got the chance to see sled dogs in actions and have a great question and answer period with a young woman whose father and brother have raced in the Iditarod and she plans to race in it in a couple of years. These dogs are highly enthusiastic and ready to PULL! (a team of dogs pulled a quad ,with its engine turned off, on a course we could barely see due to the fog but they had a great start and ending.) AND we got to sample some simply marvelous Alaskan salmon while aboard ship. The young woman told us we could have as much as we wanted, and we took her up on that! Great!

One of the things that was on our agenda, from as soon as we saw it on a state calendar, was going to The Alaska State Fair. Actually, Alaska is so large geographically that it has five different fairs all of whom claim to be the Alaska State Fair. Go Figure! So, it is really more like a county fair, but fun anyway. Anyway, one of the things that we both remember hearing about since we were kids was the large vegetables, like 80 pound cabbages that they grow in Alaska. How can this be? Well, in the summer you get 20 hours a day of sunshine, plus a goodly amount of rain. That seems to call for quick growing food. And so, it is true or a myth that the veggies are big? True! We saw some very large cabbages, including some that weighed over 25 pounds. It turns out that the winning one weighed 60 pounds and took two strong men carrying it on a sheet of plywood!

This fair was on a much smaller scale than either the Ohio or Minnesota State Fairs that we both have enjoyed. But we did manage, as you can at any fair, to eat our way through it! Mostly, typical fair food, but we were occasionally surprised to find things like reindeer hot dogs, and other “interesting” gourmet Alaskan treats. And we got to meet and talk to a number of really interesting local people who were nice and friendly. One of these was Bonnie Pagle, who worked for NOAA (people who do weather satellites, keep track of weather, and make forecasts). She was a delight, and after both Dick and Patti won prizes in her weather trivia game, we spent another half hour talking about our various experiences. She talked about her efforts to do weather education. She has a fun claim to fame in having a local interview with her show up on National Public Radio, with a friend in Seattle hearing her on his drive home! She had had to evacuate one summer as a forest fire came too close. She reflected on what it had been like to stand in her living room trying to decide what to take with her and what to leave, all within a couple of minutes. For the rest of the summer she drove around with these precious items in her car, just in case there was another fire.

We also got to go check in our bed and breakfast, this night we will NOT sleep in the parking lot of an amusement park. We will be here for two nights and are expecting to really enjoy ourselves there.

In case you are wondering, so far we haven’t had any Sarah Palin sightings. But we have run across her face on books and calendars in several gift shops.

The evening ended (again, long before it was dark ‘cause it stays light here until 11:30!) back at the 7 Gables Inn, watching the cheesy, but fun, old B movie on, you guessed it The Alaskan Highway. I guess you can say we are thorough when we set our sights on something.

Reaching Fairbanks, Alaska

Day 15, Friday, August 7th

We got a good start from Tok for the final run into Fairbanks. Rain over night had dampened down some of the smoke so the road was more visible. It was still quite overcast. We saw a moose cow and calf along the Highway as we just got out of town. A few miles further Dick saw a guy jogging alongside the road, with a handgun tucked in the back of his pants. It makes sense that you could be jumped by a cougar or a bear. When you become a prey species, then you might need to fight back. We aren’t at home anymore! Later, we saw three more moose, including another cow and calf plus a younger female that hung out by the road, posing for photos for a long time! Driving along through dense forests with occasionally saw mountains on the right or left. We passed a number of really wide rivers with water running through the gravel and image what these would be like in the spring.

Today we crossed over The Black Veteran’s Memorial Bridge decided to the 3,695 black solders that worked on the Highway. This was over the Grestle River. The segregated army operated with the idea that black solders couldn’t be sent to, or entrusted with, any work that was complicated or highly skilled. Since many of the black soldiers came from the South, there was a lot of skepticism in sending them to Alaska, but everyone agreed that they more than held their own in doing their part of building the Highway. It is nice to see more and more recognition of their role in the informational materials that we are seeing throughout the drive and in the videos, books and museums. One of the most famous photos from the construction is one of a black and a white bulldozer operator shaking hands over the blades of their bulldozers at the movement when they finally completed the very last section of the Highway at Beaver Creek Yukon. Both were very surprised when they were already at the point of meeting the engineers working from the opposite direction.

We crossed the Alaskan Pipeline today. Where we saw it the pipeline looked like a miniature suspension bridge as it crossed a river. It runs something like 600 miles. How much oil it has to take just to fill the pipeline, let alone have some left over to actually go somewhere?

We continue to see lots of ravens alongside the road. We never really thought of Alaska, home to ravens, but we guess it is.

Arrived in Fairbanks. After more than a week in very small towns, it is somewhat of a relief to see some city lights. Fairbanks is a fairly large city, especially as cities in Alaska go, about 35,000 people.

We read about a really cool campground in our “Camping in Alaska” book, but found that it was closed when we got there. It was one near a river where float planes, those with pontoons, land on the water…within the city limits of Fairbanks! When that didn’t pan out (to get with the lingo of looking for gold), we found another interesting option. A local amusement park, Pioneer Park, allows people to park and camp in their huge parking lot overnight for $12. We decided to check it out, and found out that this also included $12 off on an all you can eat Salomon Bake (kind of an Alaskan luau), and an old-time review show at The Palace Theatre entitled Golden Heart Revue: A Comedy Revue About Life in the last Frontier. This show answers a few of the more common questions about Fairbanks such as: WHY would anyone want to build a town in the godforsaken swampland? How could that town survive for more than 100 years? How do people handle the cold? With that description, how could we pass it up? So that’s just what we did. Got our parking pass, saw some of the historical pioneer and cultural things at the Amusement park, including a wonderful exhibit of quilts made up of pieces created to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Alaska becoming a state. Then we ate ourselves silly on all-you-can-eat salmon, halibut, cod, chocolate cake, and salads at the Salmon Bake. After dinner we had a bonus in hearing most of a storytelling concert by Martin, a Fairbanks’s storyteller, who told some truly funny stories about an Alaskan character named Grizzly Pete. Here is a website that talks more about Pioneer Park http://alaskandreams.net/alaskaland/Index.html

And then we saw the comedy revue which was surprisingly funny, good music and highly clever. One of the funniest parts was a take-off on the Abbott and Costello routine “Who’s on first?” but this was done with talking about the names of dogs at the positions on a sled dog team (lead, swing, team, and wheel). The audience, including us, was howling by the time they were done. Great show!

After the show, we watched most of the people get back on their shuttle or tour buses, while we walked back to our van sitting in a now nearly empty huge parking lot. We were not far from a row of park buses, soon augmented by the buses used to ferry the patrons of the evening shows back to their hotels. It was 10:00 and the sun was just going down above the overcast skies. We are learning to slow down, even if it is not yet dark. We cranked up the park’s free wi-fi and worked on our blog before going to sleep in the back of the mini-van. How funny is it all!

Alaska!!

Day 14, Thursday, August 6th

We woke up early and hit the road heading for beautiful country. Kluane National Park and Preserve is a huge fabulous park, adjacent to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park (in the U.S.), and a couple of other areas. These collectively make up the largest contiguous protected wilderness area in North America. It is probably 300 miles across and 150 miles North/South. In the middle are huge ice fields, glaciers and most of the highest mountains in North America. Unfortunately, fires are burning throughout Canada and Alaska, and as we pulled into areas off the Alaskan Highway where the book said, “on a clear day, spectacular views” we could only see smoke and clouds! How disappointing was that! We got some counsel from the visitor’s center staff, and decided to drive on a ways into the park and do a bit of hiking, we were reassured that it was much worse yesterday! As we drove, some of the mountains did appear, in a behind the smoke more washed out version, but lovely none-the-less. We stopped at a great trailhead up a valley, where Dick went for a couple of hours hike, with the trail going mostly uphill to the top of an area where he could finally see the beautiful valley on the other side. Patti, meanwhile, decided an uphill hike wasn’t on her plan, and she stayed and napped and read in the car. She has discovered an Alaskan author, Sue Henry, who writes murder mysteries with locations in the North. She had bought one, which took place on the Alaskan Highway, entitled Dead North. It was great fun to read about places that we had literally just been to in the past week. She finished that today and is now ready for the next in the series, this one about a dogsled race from Fairbanks to Whitehorse…. also on our route. Cool to read about these places from someone who obviously loves this countryside.

A moving part of our Alaskan Highway quest was stopping at Soldier’s Summit, the place in November 1942 where they had an official ribbon cutting ceremony commemorating the opening of the pioneer road to Alaska. They had done a great interpretive job with descriptions and photos. We had to hike up the old pionner road to get to the site where the ceremony took place. Then, at the top of this high hill overlooking a FABULOUS lake and mountain view, we got to hear a recording of the radio broadcast of the events that day. It was very much below zero (although the announcer said he couldn’t tell us how much because that was classified information!) It was a cool day even in the beginning of August for us, with the wind blowing up off the lake, so we could only imagine how cold it must have been that winter day! The band played a very cold sounding version of the American and Canadian National Anthems. And apparently the people gathered had to keep stomping their feet to try to keep from freezing, but they did it. The first truck rolled on by to drive the entire length of the Highway. And our journey on the Highway is nearing completion. One of the really funny stories were heard was that, even thought people were thrilled that the highway was completed, it was decided for security purposes to keep it quiet at first. Actually, the first radio announcement of the completion was in Japan, where, the spin-doctors stated that this was a great day for Japan, because this would make it much easier for them when they invaded North America.

Tomorrow will be our final day on the Highway! On to Delta Junction and then Fairbanks, AK.

Our plan had been to spend a couple of days in Kluane park area, but with the smoke, and then rain, it was seeming less fun of a place to settle in. Dick suggested that it might be time to change plans and actually get to Alaska tonight. We decided to go for it. We had heard that the stretch of road from the park to the border was the roughest part of the Alaskan Highway. After having such great roads forthe previous 1000 miles, this was a change. The word was that we would find lots of contstruction and road that needed to be reconstructed. That proved to be true. Several times we waited for pilot trucks to lead the line of cars and RVs through construction sites. At other time we felt we were on a roller coaster due the road shifting several feet, up or down, due to frost heaving. There were stretches of gravel and others with patches on patches. On top of that, we went through a serious rain storm. We both gave a sigh of relief when we reached the Alaska border. We cleared customs quickly and soon were on our way again, looking at scenery that looked like the other side of the border but the roads were slightly better. What we did find on the U.S. side of the border was more smoke, often dense to the highway, making it seem more like driving in fog.

We reached Tok, Alaska at about 8 in the evening. It was cool and smoky and we decided to eat in a restaurant and stay I a hotel instead of sleeping in the van. A good choice! The hotel even had a laundry room across the hall from our room and we were able to get some clean clothes. A good night’s sleep and then tomorrow, on to the end of the Highway and then to Fairbanks! It’s good to be back in the U.S.

On to Whitehorse, Yukon

Day 13, Wednesday, August 5th

Up early in Watson Lake and ready to drive another good day on the highway. The sky was so blue and the temperature quite comfortable. We were clearly in an area with few people. We would see only the little collections of a gas station with a restaurant and possibly lodging. There were almost no cross roads, just miles and miles of trees with a road cutting through them. At times we could see mountains in the distance on one or the other side. At others, the sea of trees just seemed to rolled to the horizon in every direction. Often there were beautiful streams, little ponds and, occasionally, a larger lake.

One of the sites today was Teslin, a small village located in the Yukon Territory. Until the turn of the century this was the summer camp or meeting place of the Tlingit tribe from southern Alaska. During the Gold Rush of 1898 the Teslin campsite boomed briefly as a stopover on the Canadian route to the Klondike. For the first time Teslin had permanent residents. The Hudson Bay Co. established a trading post for the villagers and those traveling the Klondike trail. A beautiful stop was at Tlingit Heritage Center where we had the chance to see some outstanding carving, including some traditional totem poles. We also saw a wonderful 30-foot dugout canoe. It was gorgeous. These Indian (or First Nations people) are related to a group on the Pacific coast. You can see a lot of similarities between the art. Very cool cultural exhibit.

We arrived in Whitehorse in the afternoon. Whitehorse is located on the Yukon River and is the largest city in all of the Yukon, with 3/4 of all of the residents in the territory living in the city of about 20,000. One of their claims to fame is the world’s largest weathervane: a DC3 that is out of commission after being used by a number of Yukon airlines before it crashed. It was rebuilt and then mounted as a working weather vane at the airport. Now that’s recycling!

We had a rather impromptu guided tour at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve, a formerly privately own reserve, now owned by the Yukon government and run by a non-profit educational group. We got a chance to see some of the animals that we had been seeing in the wild, they also have a lot of musk oxen, a really interesting animal. Dick finally got his chance to see Wood Bison. And the mule deer baby fawns were soooo cute! The tour was us, another couple, and the guide. One of our favorite things is to get private or semi-private tours, and we manage this quite often. Cool

Then for the evening we drove just up the road to the campgrounds where Patti arranged to tell stories in exchange for swimming and a campsite for the night. This is a privately own campground resort at another hot springs. This one had another lovely hot springs swimming pool. This one, we were interested in knowing, gets emptied and scrubbed out every night. Then, the water runs so strongly that by morning, it is filled up with hot water ready for another day.

The owners of the resort, Gary and Carla, were a delight. They both loved stories and storytelling and we delighted to exchange stories for a stay at their place. It seems that there were for many years a huge Yukon Storytelling Festival that they always attended. The festival included not only professional “famous” storytellers, but also First Nation tellers. They drew storytellers from around the globe from those areas along the Arctic Circle. This usually included stories from Iceland, Siberia, Great Britain, Greenland. They had such fine storytelling experiences that this family was really converted to the blessings of storytelling.

Patti did a storytelling circle (it was supposed to be around a campfire, but there is a severe burn ban on due to massive fires happening…) so we sat in comfortable chairs on the back patio of the resort retreat center. A lovely group of nearly all adults gathered to hear personal stories, folk tales and literary takes told by Patti. She appreciated the interested and enthusiastic audience. Even though we finished at 10:40pm, it was still light out, although the temperature had dropped. The hot chocolate that Carla supplied was greatly appreciated. How much fun to share stories with people in another country!

Over the mountains to the Yukon

Day 12 – Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Second full day on the Alaskan Highway. This time there was sun rather than rain. After 10 hours of sleep, Dick was so ready to get on the road to see some more beauty and some more great wild animals. Patti is getting a little road weary and couldn’t haul out of the bed until 7:00am, but got into the spirit once we had coffee at the Toad River Lodge. This Lodge has as its claim to fame a baseball hat collect that is now over 7,000 and counting, all displayed on the ceiling of the café! Guess you really had to see this to believe it!

This is the stretch of the road that crosses the Rocky Mountains. This was a part of the road that the planners were most concerned about but the surveyors found a good route and the road climbed up and around the mountains. Many of the views were quite stunning.

We did get to have some great animal experiences today including a young Bull Moose standing looking over the highway (Dick thought it was a statue at first until our approach startled it) and a caribou that was first on the road and then allowed us to move along beside it for a few minutes. Dick was highly disappointed that, although there were plenty of signs, we never did see a Woods Bison (the larger wilder cousin of the Plains Bison that we usually see.) We looked and looked, and Patti even attempted a buffalo call, but no luck so far.

Muncho Lake which is located within Muncho Lake Provincial Park on the Alaska Highway, has water that is perpetually a blue hue, the result of copper oxides leached from the bedrock. This large, seven mile long lake, was one of the true headaches for the crews to work around in building the road. The steep slopes resulted in many tractors and trucks rolling down into the water.

Back when the Alaska Highway was still a gravel road, the small roadside stations were the essence of life and travel along this long and lonely highway, and they still remain invaluable to the weary traveler today. We stopped at a couple, including getting gas, at the trip high of nearly $6.00 a gallon. Yipes! And as we hear, this is lower than last year.

We also got out and hiked to see a salt lick. The animals love to come to lick the minerals out of the rock. We didn’t get to see any animals, but had a nice hike and took some wonderful wildflower photos.

We also stopped for lunch at yet another great natural hot springs. This one was so hot at one part, which Patti, although she truly wanted to do it, couldn’t even put her whole foot in. Luckily, there were some other really lovely and cooler spots. The Army troops had heard about this hot springs, and built some boardwalks to get out there. They were able to enjoy hot soaks, which had to have felt good after only bathing in freezing cold mountain streams and rivers. Because the area has such hot water, there are really unique plants that grow around there. Highly refreshing and fun!

When we got to our destination of the day, Watson Lake, we went immediately to The World Famous Sign Post Forest, the town’s best known attraction. So famous, it is known - and mimicked - around the world.

Here’s the story: “The forest was started in 1942 by a homesick U.S. Army G.I., Carl K. Lindley of Danville, Il. While working on the Alaska Highway, he erected a sign here pointing the way and stating the mileage to his hometown. Others followed his lead and are still doing so to this day. On July 20, 1990, Olen and Anita Walker of Bryan, Ohio placed the 10,000th sign.” They currently have somewhere over 67,000 signs! Okay, you just really have to see this to understand the magnitude! It is probably a city block’s worth of posts with signs, signs, and more sign pounded up on the posts. Street signs, homemade signs, warning signs, official signs. We just walked through with our jaws dropping. Wow! Who knew!

We ended our evening with a viewing of a show on the Northern Lights at the Northern Light’s Center here in Watson Lakes. It was an Imax type of show, beautiful, but a little bit lulling one to a dozy state with low lights, soft music and mystically moving lights. Worth doing, but we think that seeing the real thing, which generally can only be seen in the far north in the winter, would probably be a whole lot more gripping.

Then back to the campground where we are sitting writing this both on our computers, hooked up to electricity on the site, using the camping Wi-Fi free Internet service. Camping has changed some in the 21st century!

By the way, coming into the Yukon was a first for each of us. Doesn’t that have really a ring of “really far north?” It is! But exciting to be here.

On the Alaskan Highway

Day 11 – Monday, August 3, 2009

Happy Heritage Day or British Columbia Day! We have been on the hunt every since we found out that this was a long holiday weekend to find out what the holiday was. We asked 4 different people, and got a variety of different answers. Mostly, no one was very sure, but knew they got it off from work. Here is what the trusty Internet told us:

“The first Monday in August is holiday in most of the Provinces and Territories. What you will often find, however, is that its name changes from province to province, and even amongst different regions within a province. On calendars, it is generally labeled as “Civic Holiday” as not to be region specific. No matter what it is called, it is a much-needed long weekend to augment the short Canadian summers. Here is a listing of some of the names for this Canadian holiday:
Alberta (Heritage Day)
British Columbia (British Columbia Day)
Manitoba & Northwest Territories (Civic Holiday)
New Brunswick (New Brunswick Day)
Nova Scotia (Natal Day)
Ontario (Simcoe Day)
Prince Edward Island (Natal Day)”
Saskatchewan (Saskatchewan Day)

We also found out the most popular way to celebrate this holiday is to go camping! We saw that up close and personal as we tried to get a campsite without a reservation during this past weekend!

So, the time was FINALLY for us to get away from these crowds and see for ourselves this magical highway known as the Alaskan Highway.

We drove from Dawson Creek to Ft. Nelson today, about 300 miles, a medium sized drive for our trip. The first of the U.S. Army engineers took 25 days to drive all of the their heavy road building equipment between these two towns in April 1942 along a dirt road, not much better than a trail. They had a race to get them there, as they had to go over frozen rivers before they thawed. They made it, but it really gives you pause to think. And this is the “easy” part of the building the road. There was already a kind of road/path between these two towns.

Our minds are filled up with images and voices about this project. On one display it was said that this was the most “storied road” in the world, and some of the stories are unbelievable. Not only did they build 1500 miles of road in 8 months, but also built over 130 bridges…Wow! We learned that what was pushed through at this time was called the “pioneer” or “tote” road. Civilian engineers and contractors from both the US and Canada turned it into a real road over the following year. To create an all season road in just two years is also very amazing.

As we are driving this road, we are following a book called Mileposts that tells you nearly mile by mile what happened on the road at this place; what are the names of the rivers, creeks and bridges; where are the gas stations and camp grounds, for example:

Historic Mile 0 - Dawson Creek
Start of the Alaska Highway; Offices of U.S. Corps of Engineers, Public Roads Administration (PRA) and U.S. Quartermaster Corps. In the spring of 1942, the 'end of steel' became a major terminus for troops, supplies and equipment arriving from Edmonton and destined for the north.
Historic Mile 2 - Cantel Repeater Station
Cantel telephone-teletype lines stretched from Alberta to Fairbanks, along the new highway, making it one of the world's longest open wire toll circuits at the time.

Historic Mile 21 - Kiskatinaw Bridge; Wallace A. Mackey Ltd.
A 162-meter curved structure, one of the first of its kind in Canada, is the only original timber bridge built along the highway that is still in use today.

Okay, clearly more info than you might want or need, but also highly interesting as you are driving such a historic road.

Here are some observations from an online source: “Battling subzero temperatures, permafrost, frostbite, gale-force winds, horrifying clouds of mosquitoes, and the occasional brown bear encounter, these regiments (mostly trained in the deep south) completed the Alcan in record time. Using aerial surveys and local guides, the regiments cut an artery through the Northern Rockies and Yukon so that Alaska could be supplied. Work was able to go so fast because the D-8 “dozers” they used could knock down 100-year-old spruce trees in seconds; then the troops would come in and limb the trees and lay them tightly perpendicular to the course of the road to establish a foundation called “corduroy.” Then feet of gravel and rock would be laid on the corduroy and you would have a road. Bridges and culverts seemed to be the time consumer.”

Our travel on this first day on the highway was mostly completed in a steady rain. Fortunately, the traffic was not heavy and we made good time. We stopped several times to get a closer look at some of the sights and historic signs. Patti navigated with several books on her lap, finding stories for many of the events taking place at the locations we passed.

We spent some time in Fort Nelson touring their heritage museum. They were showing yet another video of building the highway. As we watch these different points of view, we have the chance to keep increasing our understanding of what this process really was, and it was amazing.

One of the “interesting people” that we met today was a woman on staff at the museum. She showed us a couple of the locked up buildings and then, got excited about really showing us around and talking about some of the amazing, and also strange things that the had at this museum. Lots of stuff from Hudson Bay days, lots of trapper and pioneer regalia, and LOTS of equipment that had been used to build the highway. As she was explaining it, there was so much of the large equipment that got the heck beat out of it and when the Americans were finished they just let it there. As she said, most everything at the museum has a story to it. And we got a chance to hear a bunch of them from her.

We are reminded again how much later the sun goes down in the north from what it is in San Diego. There was plenty of light to drive further so we drove another hour to find a camp site in a lovely provincial park campground. We set up our little canopy with netting to protect us from the swarms of mosquitoes as we prepared and ate our dinner. With the sun still hitting the tops of the trees, we slid into our bed in the van and were soon asleep.

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!!