June 13th, 2012: From Liard Hot Springs to Watson Lake

June 13^th, 2012: From Liard Hot Springs to Watson Lake

The road has finally opened and today we left for Watson Lake. Renita of course had the Milepost open and just after she read the entry, “Watch for Grizzly bears”, we topped over a ridge and there were three grizzly bears right next to the road. It was a sow and two almost full grown cubs and it was a little scary as we were so close to them. Luckily they took off running for the bush and so we drove on.

The day started with a traffic jam as a wood bison decided to graze on the road in the campground. Our Escapee friends Rick and Karen,(part of an Escapee informal caravan, were blocked for a bit and then it looked our way to watch Renita get out of the truck and change sides. She stopped to take some images and she was way to close as the bison looked her in the eye and thought a bit before moving into the campsite across the road,(Our daughter Patty has a story of a bison in Yellowstone looking at her and her mother and then smashing into her car).

Soon we left Liard Hot Springs behind and right away we saw a large herd of cow and calf bison. A little further another herd of Bull bison were resting in their beds along the highway and not much further we saw our first black bear of the day,(if you want to see bears drive the highway in early June before the berries, as the bear are busy eating the good grass in the highway ditches)!

We wanted to stop and see the whirlpool but we didn’t feel good parking alongside the road and the turnoff was a single ended one with a small turnaround.  The first part of the drive today followed alongside the Liard River and what a wild river it is. I think I am most surprised at the huge volume, width, and velocity of the large rivers here. Not to mention the class three and four rapids. It would be sure madness to do any floating right now.

As we neared Watson Lake the rain started and so we are sitting here in the cold and wet at a Watson Lake rv park. We did put up a sign in the signpost forest so now Betty’s Rv Park in Abbeville, La, has a sign in the Yukon! All is well here and we hope you are all safe and warm. Clear skies

More Liard Hot Springs, but the road is open!

(Image from the Liard Springs Pvovinicial Park Staff and taken from Canadian Government website)June 12^th,

The road is open, or at least a pioneer road has been constructed and today they are letting rvs through the wash out. Word from the ranger station is it took about fifteen hours to go past the main break, yeah fifteen hours. It was open first for trucks but now for everyone and so a lot have left the park. The repair is one lane only and they let the traffic go through for an hour and then change the direction for the next hour.

We decided to wait another day and hope things get less congested and so we relaxed with another soaking and some easy boardwalk birding. We also met our neighbors, Bryce and Charlotte, who live in Palmer, Alaska.  He is retired and does lapidary with black opals and she teaches elementary school. He gave us some great advice on our settings and they  both said complimentary things about our wire wrapping.

Birding here is fun as we are in a whole new area and we have picked up four life birds. Yesterday we saw a Mew Gull and a Boreal Chickadee, and today we spotted a three toed woodpecker and a northern peewee. Our bird count since we retired is at 286 and we hope to soon go over three hundred species!

Tomorrow we are going to hit the road early and head for Watson Lake, where we intended to spend a night and then it’s off to Whitehorse. That will put us over the half way point on the Alaskan Highway and still about on the timeline we had planned. Clear skies and we do mean clear skies as we don’t want any more rain!

June 10, 2012: Liard Hot Springs, Our New Home till the Road is Reopened

June 10, 2012: Liard Hot Springs, Our New Home till the Road is Reopened

We had wanted to spend a day or two at the hot springs and now it looks more like a week as the Alaska Highway is closed from major washouts and mudslides. We were able to get a spot at Liard Hot Springs and to that we are thankful. The staff here is full of kindness and understanding and the Ranger at the park entrance even asked us if we have enough food, (we do).

So we have settled in here to the usual grind. Wake up at the break of dawn, Renita even woke up this morning at 4:30 am, and take a walk. Next we read a bit, eat lunch, and then go to the hot springs for a daily soak. The excitement here is the periodic bangs as the rangers set off large fireworks to adversely program the bears to stay away from the campgrounds.

As you walk to the pools on the boardwalk, you first cross shallow ponds where a rare species of chub lives. They have adapted to the warm water, but we are not sure how they will last with the cigarette butts which people casually toss off the trail, (Sometimes you wish the Rangers could train the bears to eat the litterbugs, or at least mess them up a tad bit).

Today we walked to the Hanging Gardens and enjoyed the Tufa and cascades as the hot water tumbles down the dirty white and iron stained calcite terraces. Ostrich ferns are one of the dominate forest floor plants and these are interspersed with a plethora of wild flowers.

The Beta pool is closed permanently due to the discovery of an endangered species of red snail so everyone is restricted to the Alpha pool and that’s ok as the water is so hot that you can only stand it for about fifteen minutes before you are in actual danger of hydrothermial!

Renita’s first attempt at the upper section of the pool ended in a hasty retreat and most people stayed below the man made waterfall, preferring the cooler water. I found that once you got past the hot surface water the water underneath was a bit cooler, all though I didn’t attempt to get closer to the up welling springs where the temperature is about 125 degrees Fahrenheit/54 Celsius.

So we soaked away another day and its ok, we aren’t going anywhere for awhile. Talk is that the Canadian engineers may even have to put in a Bailey bridge, wouldn’t that be a kick. The gap is over four hundred feet long and one hundred plus feet deep as the water even took out a bridge. It’s frustrating to be within eight hundred miles of Alaska, but it is what is is! Clear skies

Ps The rvs are stacked at Watsons Lake and the road is also closed at Telson, and near Klune Lake. Furthermore the Klondike highway is closed above and below Watson Lake and Whitehorse so there is no way to go around it. We are a bit frustrated to be in a complete dead and off the grid but it happens.

A Beautiful Day, Fort Nelson To Toad River

Renita was the first to spot the three large animals. They were on a hillside and we had just passed Summit Lake and Summit Pass, high in the Canadian Rockies. Could they be stone sheep or perhaps caribou? We had seen fenced caribou and wood bison in a game farm in outside of Fort Nelson, but those don't count.
That morning I had heard Renita say is disgust, "Its 5:45!", and I knew the bright sunlight had made her think it was a later. She grabbed the covers and pulled the blankets over her head trying to go back to sleep and I chuckled a bit as I got up. See I had already been woken by the light skies at two am, yup its light then, and this was my second time I had risen.
We got an early start and left Fort Nelson heading for Summit Lake Campground or perhaps Toad River. The forecast was for more another area of low pressure and more rain and perhaps flooding so we decided as we drove to go to Toad River.

After filling up with diesel we got caught in the middle of an rv convoy, this one had several Escapees in it, who we had met this morning. One couple Rick and Karen Bennet have a blog and I actually remember reading a bit of it. Anyway I got real tired of being in the convoy and let them pass, I never did play well with others.
As we climbed toward the pass we stopped to look down on the Mushwa River valley and I found some fossils, the rocks we were driving past were from the Burgess Shale. Its a rock formation that's in all the geology textbooks and I told Renita the story of how the first fossils were found.
As we approached the pass we got ahead of the caravans, must have been the sign for hot cinnamon rolls, anyway we pulled over and glassed the slopes hoping to see a stone sheep. No luck but as we drove further Renita spotted three caribou,(did you find them in the image she took)?

As we headed down from the pass we continued to stop above the outwash plain and look for stone sheep to no avail. Near the bottom I suddenly saw movement and three ewe stone sheep materialized on the hillside! There wasn't any traffic and so I stopped so Renita could take some images. Its a definite no no in the Milepost but we got some good images and the trucks and cars didn't appear till we were back on our way.

Later a truck was drafting my rear and I had to suddenly brake as a moose ran and then stopped in our lane. Luckily the truck driver was awake and it turned out ok. I had to laugh as a book we got from Jim and Nancy complains about getting behind rvers that go slow, they could have been writing about us!
Later we arrived at Toad River Lodge and checked in. We were rewarded with four bull moose feeding in the beaver pond behind the grounds. A horned grebe displayed his breeding colors and we have finally found the day that makes all the driving worthwhile. This is the reason we are traveling so far north! Clear skies

Dawsen Creek to Fort Nelson, Flash Flooding

The ditches were filled with running water and the rivers we crossed were all swollen and muddy. The rain had fallen pretty much unabated for two days and at times it came down at a pretty strong rate. I worried a little about landslides but more about our preferred campground as it was on a river, the Sikainna Chief.

Sure enough we crossed the bridge and you could see that the water was starting to overflow the banks. There was no way we would be able to safely camp there and so we drove on. I had filled with diesel at Pink Mountain,(5.96 a gallon), and so I had plenty to get to Fort Nelson.

However, the drive suddenly brightened up as we saw a wolf in the ditch, feeding on carrion. It was only the second time we have seen a wild wolf and the last time was in Yellowstone. Further down the road we noticed a large black animal, which turned out to be our first black bear!

The extra miles seemed less tiresome and Renita spotted a deer feeding unconcerned in the wet grass covered ditch. It seemed that the road ditches were filled with food, unlike the barren forest floor of the tioga. Further down the road we both spied another large black spot, it was easy as it was surrounded by a sea of bright green grass. This bear was a large black bear boar and we slowed to watch it, but didn’t stop as the truck traffic is pretty heavy on this part of the Alaskan Highway.

Finally reaching Fort Nelson, a drive of 280 miles and over 125 miles longer then we planned, we checked into the Triple G Campground. We really are tired of private campgrounds but with more rain in the forecast we thought it would be the wisest bet, instead of boon docking on a turnoff.

All in all it had been a special drive and a day worth remembering. It’s not often that we see two wild black bears and a wolf in the same day. This is one of the reasons we are making this special jouney or adventure if you will! Clear skies

Dawson Creek Part II

We spent an extra day in Dawson Creek. Our purpose was to answer some questions about which route to take, get information on camping and the Alaska Highway, find about information on fishing licences, and just plain play tourist.
First off, let me say that the people here are extremely friendly. Its nice to be greeted warmly and politely everywhere we go, and not just at the tourism/visitor center. There we got good help on fuel availability but not any answers on the Top of the World Highway. At least the staff told us to ask at Whitehorse, which is really a good answer, if you don't know  admit it!
Renita picked up every brochure available, or at least it seemed like she did. She also found a coupon book that would have saved us five bucks at dinner. Rule of the road, always check out the visitor center/chamber of commerce when you get into town!
She also picked up the British Columbia fishing information booklet, and after reading it, I decided to wait to buy a fishing licence. Its not that the cost of the licence is astronomical, it typical for non resident aliens, its that the added fees and regulations are so specific that it seems best to wait for local knowledge. There is a rule that talks about using barbless hooks and of course all my equipment has barbs. That's ok as I can just flatten them, if that meets the laws?

It seems like there are Mile Zero signs a plenty. The original one was run into by a local(?) and moved to the center of the shopping district. There is another one near the visitor center and that's the one at the start of the blog.
One of the neatest things we found was the Art Gallery located next to the old elevator in the NAR park,(Also the location of the visitor center). We found some beautiful wirework/metalwork and three full length dresses made of feathers, wood, and woven grass. Absolutely stunning pieces!
 This is a must see stop in Dawson, Creek, if you like the arts. There is also a display of early photos taken during the construction of the Alaskan Highway so even if you aren't artsy, climb the stairway and enjoy the early images. I didn't realize that seven thousand of the construction soldiers were  African Americans. Go figure.
So what can I say about Dawson Creek, friendly people, nice local art, oh and don't go looking for the Alaskan Cafe as its closed,(Instead we went to the White Spot and had a poor overpriced meal of fishy tasting salmon and average ribs). Clear skies.

ps fuel prices here are about 5.10 a gallon for diesel but still cheaper then we paid in Connecticut last spring. It has been raining hard here for two days and we are a little concerned about flooding further north but the locals say its the first rain in a while and sorely needed.

Dawson Creek

June 5th 2012,

We got an early start and left Whitecourt by a little after eight am, It was raining hard and the forecast was for high winds so it was pretty easy as there was nothing holding us here. I drove for the first bit and then Renita gave me a spell before it really started raining harder and the traffic increased so we switched driving seats yet again.
I was suprised at all the traffic and I had somehow expected Canada to be more wild, but with all the oil wells and the Athabasca Tar sands I shouldn't have been so naive. Renita did spot a deer but other than that it was just a long day of windy and wet driving on a busy four lane highway. We did reach the tioga, at Whitecourt, and so trees have pretty much closed in the road. It is a lot like driving in the Upper Pennisula or Northern Minnesota, but that should also be no suprise.
My first impression of Dawson Creek is that its kind of like an oil town in Wyoming. I did manage to drive through the roundabout and we did spot the Mile Zero marker but today is a day to jusr check in and rest after finishing the East Approach to the Alaska Highway. The Milepost has already been a personal tour guide as we follow the listed bits of information as we pass them. It is the book to have!
With Renita's great navigation skills we found and checked into the Mile Zero Rv Park where the manager gave us the impression that we were lucky to have found a spot.He was nice and helpful but the place is pretty full.  We plan on being here for two nights before we start on the actual Alaska Highway. However we do plan on going a lot slower, covering less miles and enjoying the sites and things to do along the route.