Alaska 2014 Week 4

Alaska 2014  Week 4

June 16, we headed North on Canada 16.   We saw a big grey fox on the side of the road.  Jim suggested going to the Flying J at Hinton.  Larry said he wasn’t going to comment one way or another on that idea after the last Flying J in Calgary haha.  But we found it right outside Hinton.  It sure is a far cry from our Flying J’s in the U.S.  It had a dirt parking lot and no Denny’s.  It’s actually affiliated with Shell gasoline.  After getting our fuel at Flying J, we continued on Canada 43 West.  We got our first windshield ding and we weren’t even on a gravel road yet. Bummer!

                       

June 17, Continuing Canada 43 West to Dawson Creek.  We will get on the Alaska Highway at Dawson Creek. The beautiful mountains are gone but we are going through beautiful farmland in British Columbia.  We also ran into construction to widen the road for about 10 miles.  However, the construction was to the side of the road, and the highway was just fine. We spent the night at a Walmart in Ft. Saint John. Before we bedded down for the night we visited the Ft. Saint John Museum and watched a video about the highway and toured the museum itself.  They had some wonderful artifacts from people who lived in the town from back in the day.  It was very interesting.  I fixed dinner in the motorhome and after we ate, Jim decided he wanted to get ice cream so we found the dairy cream and treated ourselves and the dogs to ice cream. 

June 18, we continued on the Alaska Highway and had a good day for spotting wildlife.  We saw mule deer, a female moose and 4 black bears. That evening we stayed in a roadside pulloff.  We had a waterfall on the right, and mountains on the left!  It was a very peaceful evening.  Except when we pulled into the pulloff it was pretty bumpy and one of our cabinet doors flew open and our dishes and bowls came tumbling out on the floor and 4 of our 8 bowls broke all over the floor.  Thankfully my Aunt had given me these heavy duty plastic bowls years ago and they survived the big turn-out.  Thank you Aunt Sheila!

June 19, Continuing on the Alaska Highway proved to be another great day for spotting wildlife.  We saw our first bear about 1 minute into our trip.  Then about 5 minutes later we saw another one trying to get into the garbage can on the side of the road at one of  the roadside pulloffs.  Then Mem saw two bears laying down in the grass on the right of us in a ditch.  I missed those darn it.  Then we came upon  a herd of mountain sheep.  We kept seeing the mountain sheep for several miles and it was pretty amazing to watch them skim along the side of the mountain.  That evening we stayed at the Liard River Hot Springs Campround.  As we were setting up our RV a black bear ran through the park I couldn’t believe it.  Anyway Liard River is where they have these wonderful hot springs.  So once we got settled, we drove across the street where the hot springs were and enjoyed a nice relaxing afternoon in the hot springs.  When we got back to the campground we were told that there was wifi in the lodge, so we took or laptops and ipads over to the lodge and got on-line for awhile.  For some reason I could not get on-line with my laptop so I couldn’t do much with my blog.  As we were walking back to our RV, we saw the biggest buffalo I’ve ever seen walking thru the park.  Jim decided to get up close and personal to get a picture.  He got within 20 feet of it.  I couldn’t believe it.  The buffalo looked pretty mean but he didn’t seem to bother Jim.  Thank God.

June 20.  Another great day for wildlife.  The next morning we dumped our tanks and got on the road about 7:15an,  As we were leaving the Campground, a herd of  buffalo including a few babies were walking down the road in front of the campground.  Then we kept seeing black beans, 2 grizzly bears, Larry saw a moose, 4 buffalo and (two were fighting).  In the last three days we have seen a total of 20 bears so far.  The last time we came to Alaska we saw a total  of 4 bear on the whole trip and three of those we had to use binoculars to see them.  This trip so far has been unbelieveable.  We stopped at Watson Lake today and hung a sign with our name and city and state and of course we had to document it with a picture.  We have been impressed with the fact that the Alaska Highway has been paved all the way so far.  But today we ran into some stretches of gravel.  The first stretch of gravel was 3 miles long.  So we were thinking this isn’t so bad.  Then we ran into another stretch of gravel and wouldn’t you know a pickup truck came barreling down past us and we got another ding in our windshield, this time it was on my side.  So it looks like we will be getting windshield work done in Whitehorse.  We hit one more stretch of gravel road today.  It was 7 miles long.  Thankfully no dings while traveling that stretch.  Ten years ago when we traveled this road, I’d say at least a fourth of the 1400 miles was gravel so we are pretty happy to only get this much; otherwise the road has been great.  We are spending the night in a roadside pullout again.  It is a wonderful spot overlooking a lake and a snowcapped mountain in the background.  We met a biker (as in bicycle) who stopped by for a short break.  He told Jim he is riding from Prudo Bay, Alaska to the Southern part of South America.  He said he is averaging 60 miles per day.  That is probably 25,000 miles.  Jim thinks he’s ridden about 1500 miles already.  So far today we have driven 4400 miles; only 600 miles to go to get to Alaska!

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June 21 We made it to Whitehorse, Canada today.  We are staying at the High Country RV Park.  We are going to stay two nights here.  Jim and Larry went and washed our tow vehicles.  They were filthy dirty.  We also got our windshield dings on our motorhome repaired too.  We ended up having three of them.   Lucky for us as we were setting up, Larry noticed a guy repairing a motorhome across from us and let Jim know so Jim went over and asked him if he could fit us in and he came over and repaired ours tonight too.  So we won’t lose any time tomorrow having to wait around getting that done.  The lady in the office told us this is the longest day today there will only be 3 hours of darkness today.  Jim says it won’t be a problem for him, he is really tired daylight or not, he will sleep good tonight.  After seeing all that wildlife the last three days, we didn’t see any today.  We did see two porcupines though.  They are really weird looking.  We are looking forward to staying put for a couple of days and doing some sightseeing.