Sign Forest

Day 9

 

   Somebody forgot to close all the windows and vents and turned the heater off in the night.  It got more than a little cold in the RV. And guess how our day started?  That’s right, a big fight that included a tug of war over the covers, about who was going to get up and turn the heater on and close all the windows.  How cold was it?  The sky was overcast and it actually spit snow at us a bit.

    Ok, we made a deal.  Irene closed the windows and vents, turned the heater on and came back to bed to warm up.  Jim had to get up and cook a big hot breakfast.  Left over baked potatoes sliced and diced and cooked with onion and special seasoning we brought along.  Bacon,
Eggs and toast with jelly, and a rare cup of coffee.  That’s the ticket.

   Cleaned up the kitchen, did the dishes and took inventory of what we may need if we can find a grocery store today.  List is very short, guess we did a good job back on day one.   We broke camp at about 7:45 and headed north.

     So how did the day progress?  Check it out:

    8:05 Saw 2 Stone sheep on side of road

    8:15 2 more Stone sheep crossing the road

    8:45 Heard of 10 Stone sheep on side of road

   9:30 Stopped at Liard Hot Springs and jumped in.  Wow, how soothing and relaxing.  The actual hot springs are about a 4/10 of a mile hike along raised board walkway to protect sensitive environment.  It is an area with lots of bogs and very small ponds and seems to be a favorite dining room for moose and elk.

   11:00  Left Liard Hot Springs and hit the road

   11:04  Saw 3 Bison grazing on side of road

   11:06 Saw 15 Bison including many babies

   11:09 Saw 22 Bison including many babies

   Noon: Stopped at vista point overlooking The Yukon River and had lunch.  This is a vantage point famous for being the location that robbers used to watch the boats below and pick out their targets. Sitting high on a bluff, we could see the river for a mile or two both up and down river.  Pretty cool.

  1:00 Back on road

  1:59 Saw 5 wild horses on side of road.  Looked like they could take care of themselves

  2:40 Arrived in Watson Lake, our days destination.  We gassed up, found a grocery store and re provisioned.  And then we found the sign forest.  Not any sign forest, but the one you can see on the internet.

     This is an area of someplace between one and two acres in size where the visitors center, the Chamber of Commerce or the City council has placed large 8 X 8 posts by 15 feet tall, in the ground.  The deal is that people driving through will post their own sign.  We saw street signs, city limit signs ( I am sure they are all replicas), homemade signs with family names on them, country signs and on and on. The majority of the signs were license plates from all over

    It was really neat to walk about the “sign forest” and read the signs.  Quite a few were of professional quality carved out of wood, others were simply hand painted.  The most interesting was to read where they were from.  All over the world. Signs from Australia, Germany, Italy, Austria, Chile, Argentina, Georgetown, Coloma, Sacramento, Palm Springs, Pico Rivera.  Signs with family names on them and then annotated with the years they came through, some as many as 5 and 6 times.  .

    We found our fellow travelers Jim and Shirley from North Carolina putting up their sign.  We helped a little because he was putting it up with a screw driver and the wood was almost petrified. 

    Very cool stop and a fun way to spend an hour or two.

   4:00 Jim and Shirley were going to go all the way to Teslin for their nights stop.  We did not want to drive that far and bid them farewell.  We still had quite a bit of energy and headed out to see what the campgrounds at Junction 37, where the Cassier Highway meets Highway 97 would be like.  Campground was not open, snow was falling a bit, and the owners of the hotel offered to allow us to park next to their building with no wifi, no hookups for $25.  Think we can do better.

 4:15 drove to Continental campground about 1 mile away from Junction 37.  It was still closed for winter.

4:18 Drove to Rancheria RV park about 5 miles away. It was closed for the winter.

4:19  Ok, what the heck. We might as well drive to Teslin ourselves.

7:15 arrived in Teslin exhausted and ready for a good night’s sleep.  Jim and Shirley were walking through the parking lot on the way to the café to use the wifi.  It was not yet up and operating for the campgrounds.

    We are parked right next to Jim and Shirley and next to Lake Teslin.  It was completely frozen over.  We had our traveler’s special for dinner, Chili Dogs with Cole slaw.  Yum, quick easy and delicious.

    The café was very generous and allowed us to sit in a corner, plug our computer in and sit at a table to use the internet.  Tried to write blog and send it out, but it takes too much bandwidth.  We have resorted to writing the blog on Word, saving it and will copy and paste when we can send it out.

   Feeling guilty about using the café with the young waitress refilling our water glasses all the time, we discuss if maybe we should buy something to make it worth her while.  We know they have homemade pies but are not in the mood for something like that.  French apple, berry, and a rhubarb pie.  Nope, not gonna do it.  Oh, they have vanilla ice cream.  Nope not going there.  Ok maybe a little piece.  Can you heat the pie and put the ice cream on top?

   Now you know what a day on the road looks like. 364 miles driven.  Tomorrow we will go over 3000 miles for the trip so far..

                                                                     10:00 pm at Teslin

TOAD RIVER

DAY 8

    Today is when we hope to make it to Tetsa River to camp for the night.  We have been kind of pointing at this stop because it is advertised as “World Famous Cinnabons”, as well as campsites along the river.  This was to be one of our longest days with total mileage of 357 miles.

     Leaving a bit later than we anticipated, 7:30, meant that we would have a long day on the road. 

    This proved to be a red letter day in terms of seeing wildlife.  We encountered Black Bears on two separate occasions, both immediately on the side of the road.  One was alone, grazing on the grasses, the other two were a mother and cub. The cub looked to be a yearling and was following mamma everywhere.

    Shortly after, we spotted two Moose and were able to get our typical picture, from the rear.  Snapped a bunch of pictures and hope that some will show the moose’s face.  Moose were again on side of the road, only this time they were munching on the grass and perhaps the lichen underneath.

 

 

    Coming around a bend and looking at the forest hoping to finally see a Grizzly, we came upon two Caribou.  You got it, they were grazing along the side of the road.  Nice looking animals and they do not seem to mind that we stopped and took pictures.

 

                                                                                           Caribou Grazing

   I think we need to explain about the Canadian Roads.  All the roads are clear cut for a distance of about 75 feed on either side of the highway.  There is grass growing in this “neutral” zone and it is a natural place for wild life to graze.  You can see instances where the forest has tried to reclaim the neutral zone, but the trees have been cut and cleared.

    We got our first look at what we thought were big horn sheep.  Not so intimidating but maybe not as large as we had anticipated.  We discovered later that we were in fact not looking at big horn sheep, but Stone Sheep.  They are descended from Dall Sheep (Big Horn) but have thinner horns and are smaller.  There were 6 of them and they were very wary of us in the RV.  We were no more than 15 feet from them and did not get out. We were fortunate to be able to take a lot of pictures, and are hoping some are head shots, as even the sheep were bent on showing us their posteriors.

     The scenery today began to become a bit repetitive, if not monotonous.  Still seeing the Canadian Rockies to the west, with the road traveling through smaller mountains and down through valleys.  The forests are so thick that it is impossible to see more than a few feet past the front edge next to the road.  We cannot identify with  certainty what type of trees are here, but guess that we are looking at Aspen, Birch, Spruce and some kind of pine.  The conifers are short and have a very small canopy, maybe 10 feet at the largest and the largest tree has a trunk that is maybe 8-10 inches in diameter. 

     Coming over a ridge or hilltop, we get views that stretch for miles and miles and miles. Our guess is that we are looking at forest and mountains that are much farther than from the Coast Range over the Central Valley to the Sierras.  And then we cross another hill or mountain and see the same thing all over again. 

   

 

    We finally arrived at Tetsa River, pulled in and checked the campground out.  Don’t think so.  Bathrooms were a portable trailer, 1960’s style with prices painted on a sign attached to the bathrooms.  Looked like part of the campground was for permanent residences, with trailers similar to the bathrooms.

                                                    Laundry, showers and washrooms note prices
   We decided to at least see what the world famous Cinnabons were all about and went into the store/office.   Neat old place that reminded Jim of Happy Camp or Feather Falls.  Looked about the souvenirs and then went up to order our Cinnabons.  Discovered they also made fresh Sourdough bread.  This place smells like heaven.

   Approaching the cashier to order, the man behind the counter was a twin to Gabby Hayes.  He wore faded denim overalls with straps and had a full salt and pepper beard (mostly salt).  He looked to be about 70 years old and had a very good sense of humor.  We ordered our Cinnabons, bought a loaf of sourdough that was so hot from the oven it could not be wrapped yet and returned to our RV.

     Temptation was too much.  We sat right there and ate our fresh out of the oven Cinnabons.  The whole thing, and washed it down with ice cold milk.  UMMMMMMM  UMMMMMM UMMMMM.    Don’t know if they are better than the ones in Stanley, Idaho or not.  Will have to get Big John McIntosh up here to try them and see what he thinks.  Close tho. 

   We could not justify cutting the bread just yet because of the cinnamon.  Ok, maybe just a thin heal.  Maybe put a little butter on it and share it.  Wow.  It was good.  Really good.   Not good enough for us to spend the night here tho.

   Off we go.  It is about 2:30 in the afternoon so we have made very good time.  Our new goal is to make it to Toad River.  We are both tired from the driving and all the days on the road, but think this maybe an opportunity to make up a little time.

    We make it all the way to Toad River at about 4:00 when we pull into the campground at.  We have been joking that it is still early and we can go farther on up the line.  We have traveled a total of 348 miles. Neither one of us wants to be the one to say we cannot go farther.  A quick smile by one of us and we have decided to spend the night.

                                                                           Toad River at 10:00 pm

     Toad River is cold with a very stiff breeze coming through.  We started to spend the  evening outdoors and quickly gave the area back to its most common habitants.  Mosquitoes the size of ground wasps.  And they did not like company.  Treated us like we were their favorite fast food joint.

    Pretty campground with great views of Toad River and surrounding mountains.  We decided that we would take a little nap before dinner so at 5:00pm, we both climbed on the bed for a quick siesta. 

    So with our Siesta over at 9:45, we felt it was too late for dinner and did what anybody sensible would do. We popped popcorn and had hot chocolate.  Worked on the blog a bit, returned  some emails and tried to catch up with the Giants.  Frustrating that the Canadian government does not order all Giant Games broadcast.

   Irene went outside to document our nightly routine. Taking a picture to show how light it stays up here.  11:00 at Toad River was finally dark.

      

The Short Cut

Day 7

    We decide to take the campground owners advice and take highway 40 to Grande Cache and on to Grand Prairie.  Looking at the map, we were opting to take what looked to be the better roads, not necessarily the fastest route by going towards Edmonton and cutting over at Edson.   We thought the road on Highway 40 looked to be a challenge.  The KOA campground owner said he used it regularly as Grand Praire was where they went to do substantial shopping. Assured that it was a good road, we proceeded.

At 5:00am,our first wildlife of the day, a good omen?

    Although the road was a bit rough in places, it turned out to be a very enjoyable drive.  For the first time we felt like we were actually in the wilderness and on a road that matched our imagination of how this trip would be like.  Winding, turning, very few cars, and fewer houses for over a hundred miles.

    Jim started out driving for first 45 minutes and pulled over on a dirt driveway to change places with Irene.  We think that fate is with us as we noticed a sign, ELLIS’S  in the driveway announcing that what must be a cousin, lived on the property!  Deciding discretion was the better part of valor in a remote area, we chose not to drive down the dirt road and knock on the door.  Moved on.

    We slowed down at one point to watch a deer grazing on the side of the road.  We spotted another one barely in the woods a few yards away and stopped to watch  it.  All of a sudden we had a fawn jump up and cross the road just in front of us.  Apparently mom was the one in the woods and welcomed it to her side. 

    About a half hour later we saw one of the gangliest creatures ever put on this earth.  Yes, I confess now that it was a Moose and they do exist.  This one did not have any antlers and it’s hair was molting.  Basically as we  slowed down to take a picture, the Moose made a move that has become the norm, he turned his back to us and showed his rump.

     Today we had our first foul weather.  We kept running into rain squalls.  We were watching the Virga from a long way off and wondered if and when we would be hit by them.  We drove through maybe 10 or 15 rain squalls that lasted from 1 minute to maybe 5.  We called them natural RV car washes.

    The most outstanding thing about today outside of the animals was the clear vistas we had.  There were not a  lot of high drama views just long range views with vast forests in front of us backstopped my mountains.  At some point, to keep ourselves interested, we timed how long it was between cars passing us on the road.  Longest was 8 minutes. Nobody, nothing, zilch was on the road with us.

    Today we drove a total of 341 miles.  Like a couple of dummies, we did not take full advantage of all the Motor Homes amenities until today.  First, when Irene drove, Jim took a nap.  When Jim drove, Irene took a nap.  On the bed with the curtains drawn.  The room dark.  That is what we call roughing it.

                   Interesting sign on Hwy 40

    

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                           Followed by this one

    Today marked a milestone of sorts. We officially started on the Alaska Highway.  It has always known as the ALCAN, but no more.  Nobody could give us a good answer.  We missed going to the visitor center, as they make a bit of a production out of your first time, take a picture of you and give your a pin showing you started the Alaska Highway.

 Calling it a day at about 7:30, we pulled into the Rotary RV park in Ft St John.  Nice campground that was lake front.  Good hot showers and a clean campground.  It is owned and operated by the Fort St John Rotary Club with all proceeds going to charity.

     Campground host said they had only been open a couple of days.  They had 7 feet of snow about 10 days ago.  The warm weather hit and melted it all and caused a lot of flooding in the campground.  The campground is actually a bit lower than the lake level. 

     We were one of 6 GAH motor homes in the campground that night and were able to share a few stories with a couple of them.  Everybody goes to bed early as the repetitive long drives is tiresome.  We are noticing that the days are getting way longer.  Sun is still up at 9:30 pm and it is light until about 11:00.

 

OH MY GOD !

DAY 6

(part 2)

     It was time to take our leave and meander up to The Athabasca Glacier and the Columbia Ice Field.  The Ice Field Parkway continues to astound us with the beauty and the drama of the snow covered mountains.  We see quite a few glaciers and snow fields but are unable to find names for them.   Until we see one on the west side of the road from afar.  As we close in to the glacier, we find that the actual glacier is really close to the road.

     The glacier is known as Crowfoot, but we do not know the reason for the name.  We learn later that the Glacier is maybe 300-500 feet in depth.   There is a turnout in the road that offers us a spectacular view of Crowfoot so we pull over and have lunch. We are about ½ mile from the face of the Glacier. One of the top 5 picnic spots we have ever had.  Just relaxed and enjoyed the view.

Bird that joined us at crowfoot glacier

   Taking to the road again, we continue to be amazed at the scenery.  It truly is one of those things where you go around a corner and keep saying look at that, stop, get the camera.  We know that later when we see the pictures we will not be able to identify them, but the point is the picture, not the name or exact location with these.  We are not looking at the Matterhorn, but maybe several hundred Matterhorns.

Ice field with tiny buses in background.  those are the ice field bus'es

    It is impossible to estimate the distances or size of anything at the Athabasca Glacier or the Columbia Ice field as there is almost no perspective to draw from.  You see this wall of ice and snow, very visible, but not close.  You see the massive field of snow in front of you, but it is a mystery as to how big it really is.  From the parking lot of the visitors center, you can see tiny dots of people and buses way up there. You think they are maybe 1 mile away, but then you realize that it has to be farther because of how small they appear.

     We purchased our tickets to take a “bus” ride up to the glacier and walk about it a bit.  We were at first a bit disappointed because we boarded a “normal tour type of bus” instead of the famous huge red ones that you see in ads and on TV.  Thought we were getting gipped.  This bus was just a shuttle to get us to the Ice Field Buses.

     Ice Field buses are really cool with tires that are 5 feet tall, and the bus looks like it has been jacked up for a monster truck rally.  Ours is not painted the typical red that you see, but is red, white and  green.  Tour guide refers to it as the Rastafarian Bus.  Ice Field bus has a top speed of 18 miles per hour and is not designed to travel on regular roads.  Tremendous power with almost balloon type tires for traction, it has the ability to climb what we estimate is a 30-35% grade on way back from ice field.

                                  Approaching bus is about 5o feet below us and maybe 100 feet away

    We are able to spend about 30 minutes walking on the glacier and are cautioned not to go off the area where the buses are parked.  The concern is that the glacier has soft spots and you could easily step on one and fall through a crevice.  You don’t have to tell us twice.

    The pictures will not give proper perspective, so we pass on what the guides tell us.  From our spot on the glacier, it is about 2 kilometers to the ice field.  From the ice field it is another 2 Km to the face of the mountain.  The wall of the mountain is app. 1 Km tall.  It is estimated the Glacier is 300 meters deep. Not only do the pictures not give proper perspective, but standing on the glacier it is impossible to grasp what we are looking at.

                                      Walls where glacier used to be, about 500 feet above our heads

       Off the glacier and onward we go on the Ice Field Parkway.  Gradually the dramatic mountain peaks lessen and then move to the background, replaced by forests and meadows as we gradually climb to Jasper.  On this stretch of road we sight our first Black Bear! 

     As we were driving on a particularly long straight stretch, we noticed a number of vehicles off to the side of the road, some going north, some going south, and some northbound parked  on the South bound side of the road, a sure sign that some type of wild life has been spotted.  We dutifully slowed down to a crawl until we came upon the stopped vehicles, rolled down the window and asked no one in particular if there was an animal sighting.  “Yes, there is baby bear on the other side of the road and down the embankment”.

    That was all we needed to park, get out and go over to see and take a picture. As Jim, who was driving got out, the baby bear climbed the embankment and started crossing the road.  This was no infant, but appeared to be maybe a yearling and we guessed about 150+ pounds.  As we were getting set to take a picture, one of the other tourists went to get up close to get a better picture, maybe as close as 10 feet.

      A bunch of people told her to get back that the momma bear was undoubtedly close by.  We got back in the RV and were about to drive off when we heard that the momma bear was in fact on our side of the road.  Irene looked out the window and in the mirror and finally located momma bear, about 75 yards behind us.  We go out, used the zoom lens and took a couple of pretty good pictures.  Momma seemed pretty calm and was eating the grass as we photographed her.   Deciding that she was best left alone, we mounted up and drove off.

   The rest of the drive on the parkway was relatively uneventful, not to say ugly.  Beautiful conifer forests with streams and frozen ponds all along the route.  About 20 minutes after spotting the Bears, we came upon 2 Caribou grazing along the road.  Magnificent looking animals, and built powerful enough to pull Santa’s Sleigh by themselves.

    We finally exited Jasper National Park about 5:00pm and were debating if we could make it to Edison, our planned stop for the night.  We decided that it would take another 2 hours and we needed rest more than distance.  As part of our planning, we had identified an alternative place to stay, the KOA at Hinton.  What a fortunate break.

    We pulled into the KOA about 6:00pm and registered.  Nicest, cleanest, neatest campground office we could imagine.  Site was beautiful with 4 or other GAH travelers there.  The owner of the KOA, Jim, hopped in his golf cart and led us to our site.

    Jim stayed to make sure everything was alright and we had a very nice conversation.  When we told him we would be leaving early to go to Edson and then cut across to 97n and up to Grande Prairie, he stopped us an asked why.  Told him that the road looked better from there up, he advised us to take Hwy 40 to Grande Prairie, that it would save us about 4 or 5 hours.

    This KOA is without a doubt the cleanest, and best run RV Park we can imagine.  Bathrooms are spotless, showers are clean and freshened up each day.  We give this park 5 stars.

   Tomorrow, the long journey continues.

OH MY GOD !

DAY 6

(part 1)

   We have searched for some way to describe this day in one or two words.  Beautiful, awesome, inspiring, breathtaking, unbelievable, stunning, none come close to describing what this day was to bring us.  What is about to unfold today is the most amazing drive that can be imaginable.  Whatever we have seen in films, in books and even on Natural Geographic Channel did not prepare us for drive from Banff to Lake Louise and the Ice Field Parkway to Jasper.

    We left Banff early heading north through an alpine valley with tall trees and soaring mountains above.  The air was crisp with a brilliant blue sky above and a crystal clear day.  As we caught glimpses of the mountains with snow covered peaks silhouetted against the sky we began to think that this was, as advertised, one of the top 10 drives in the world.

        What road looked like about 3 miles from Banff

    Very shortly, we started seeing the most amazing Alpine mountains with sharp peaks, and solid granite walls that one can imagine.  Picture the movies and documentaries you have seen of the Swiss and Italian Alps, the soaring videos of the Himalayas, any movies with pictures of the Matterhorn.   Now picture all of these rising on both sides from the floor of the valley on the road that you are driving on.  Just no good way to describe it.

                                                   Beginning to see pattern on both sides of road.
       We started taking pictures of the mountains thinking that surely this one view was one of the most amazing and beautiful that we could possibly find.  Then we drove around the corner and quick stop, get the camera out, look at that, wow what a beautiful sight.   This went on for over 100 miles.  Yes that is right 100 miles of the most incredible scenery you can imagine.  We are not exaggerating.  Every little curve in the road opened up a new and stunning landscape with snow capped peaks, glaciers, ice fields and canyons filled with snow and streams.

    
We arrived in Lake Louise mid morning with trepidation about being able to actually drive in to the Lake. We had heard that the road in was narrow, winding and not able to accommodate RV’S.    Not to be denied, we started the drive up and over a small mountain and down to Lake Louise and Chateau Lake Louise.  Common sense should have told us that a hotel of the size and scale of Chateau Lake Louise would require the ability to accommodate buses and large trucks to supply the hotel!

    We found a very large parking lot with quite a few of our fellow adventurers already there as well as busses and RVs that dwarfed in size our motor home.  We quickly found a place to park and made the short walk to the lake.  ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKING.

    Even the great pictures taken by the world’s best photographers do not do this place justice.  The lake is still frozen solid except for a few short feet along the shoreline.  The mountains appear to go straight up from the lake.  The LAKE LOUIE glacier is visible at the far end of the lake, adding extra drama to an already overwhelming scene.

     We took a short walk about the end of the lake closest to the Chateau, finding part of the lake that was not frozen.  The water is so clear that what appeared to be very shallow water was actually from 10-15 feet deep.  We took as many pictures as possible and then decided to take a short tour of the Chateau.

 

  We walked up from the lake to the rear of the Chateau.  There is an expansive deck along the entire rear of the hotel with incredible 180 degree views of the lake, the mountains and Lake Louise Glacier.  Once entering the hotel, we discovered that the rear of the hotel was a lobby, with virtually walls of windows bringing the vistas indoors.  During inclement or particularly cold weather, this appears a perfect place to relax, read a book, people watch, have a hot toddy and just enjoy yourself.

    Walking around the Chateau’s first floor, we noticed that the Chandeliers were very unique.  Each chandelier has 4 carved handmaidens as supports.  These handmaidens appeared to be hand carved and are unique to each fixture.  The lobby is old school elegance with people sitting, reading the paper, quietly talking and just people watching.  Quite a place.  The only thing missing was Bond, James Bond in a tuxedo with a beautiful woman on his arm.

        Note the carved figures holding the chandelier up