The Adventures of T&A

Cloudy sunshine this morning.  We left our camp and hit the road earlierthan we have been.  We saw more Stone Sheep standing on the side of the roadand several more caribou.  The caribou are more camera shy than thesheep.  

We drove several hundred miles to the town of Fort St. John.  We gotsome info on camping in Alberta.  We stopped for lunch at a place calledBoston Pizza.  A bit pricier than we expected, but good.  As we werefinishing up, the folks we spoke to on the trail the other day came in.  Wesaid Hi and then had to go.

As we were leaving town, we saw a black bear and two cubs that had justcrossed the road.  By the time we got the cameras out, they had dashed intothe woods.  

Northwestern Canada, the Yukon Territory, is a huge hunting andfishing destination, because of that, there are primitive campsitesEVERYWHERE!!   The only time we stayed at a provincial campground (runby the province, similar to a US state) was when we were on native tribal land(here, known as "FirstNation").  Tribal land is not public landlike BLM or National Forestlands.  Out of respect for the First Nations, westayed at a designated campground when traveling thru their land.  Mostof the time we camped at a well used pull off.  And we never leave a trace.

This was a long driving day, much like the last couple of days.  Thereseems to be a lot of Canada in between Alaska and the "Lower 48"!  The townsare getting closer together now, only 50-100km (roughly 25-50 miles)apart.  We arrived in Dawson Creek, BC.  We found a campground withshowers on the edge of town for the night.  

It stopped raining by the morning, but there are some heavy clouds.  We made a quick coffee and tea and hit the road.  We stopped for a short walk at Rancheria Falls.  It was nice, along a boardwalk, but we’ve been jaded with the beautiful waterfalls of Colorado.  

We stopped at Watson Lake and it’s famous “Sign Post Forest“.  In 1942, a US soldier working on the Alaskan Highway was recovering from an injury in Watson Lake.  He was given the duty to repair a sign post listing the distances to a few local places, including New York, Chicago and Tokyo.  After he repaired the signs, he added a sign to his own hometown, Danville, IL.  This started a trend and as of 2004, they have over 54,000 signs put up by individuals from all over the world.  

We finally saw some wildlife.  We were warned about free range herds of animals along this particular stretch of road.  We hadn’t seen anything for hundreds of miles and we came over a hill near Fireside, BC and saw a herd of maybe 50 buffalo on the side of the road, just grazing.  

We took a short hike at a mineral overlook.  This area overlooks an portion of a river milky with mineral rich glacial flour.  As glaciers flow slowly along, the rocks in the valley are ground to a fine powder.  As the ice melts, this powder, or glacial flour, is suspended in rivers and streams, giving it an odd milky appearance.  The animals need the calcium, magnesium and other minerals.  They gather along these mineral rich streams and lick the deposits off the rocks.  Although it was a nice walk, we didn’t see any animals here.  We talked with some folks on the trail from Ontario, who said they had seen lots of animals, most further south than where we were.  

We gassed up at the next spot, paying $1.39 per liter, or $5.02 per gallon.  Ouch!  We drove further and saw our first caribou.  It crossed the road and just looked at us.  We shot several photos and moved on.  Soon, we rounded a corner and nearly hit about a dozen Stone sheep. in the road.  We stopped and took photos, turned around, went back and took some more photos.  They just stood there, 10 feet off the road, posing.  They finally moved on and so did we.  

We saw another caribou and a deer on the side of the road.  We finally saw some wildlife!!  Now, if we can only see a moose and a bear (from a safe distance, of course!).   The Milepost told us of a closed campground.  We stopped there and found 2 other vehicles there.  We picked a spot away from them and cooked dinner.  We didn’t want to camp here, so we kept driving for about another hour.  We found another camp spot up the road (there are LOTS of them out here!).  

We’ve been without cell service for several days now.  Andrew just quipped, “Thank God there are places free from cell phones”.   And then he said, “We have to find a phone tomorrow”.    We have been in contact with his mother every few days, for safety’s sake.  We have no cell service in Canada (without buying a Canadian phone with service), so we have a phone card we’ve used to check in by payphone.  We will le traveling thru Canada for a total of six or more days before we hit Montana.  We plan to stop at Jasper, Banff and Lake Louise National Parks before we reach Montana and Glacier National Park.  

The rain and the isolation are getting to us both.  The scenery is beautiful, but every view is exquisite rolling hills, covered in spruce, pine and aspens with a lovely lake at the bottom of the valley.  Beautiful, but after several days, even exquisite beauty gets old.  

The sun is shining this morning and Lene has a great breakfast for us withfresh fruit, egg dish and scones, and of course, coffee and tea.  Wechatted with Lene for for quite a while and showed her a few things on thecomputer.  We had to go out and talk with her white German Shepard,Misty.  We had to hit the road, but first, we got supplies at “TheReal Canadian Superstore“.  This looks a lot like a Wal-Mart,but Whitehorse has a Wal-Mart on the other side of town.  The Real CanadianSuperstore was the first real grocery store we’d seen in weeks!  It wastough not to buy everything!  We stocked up on several canned goods to getus thru the next few small towns, but we also got some fresh fruit and a nicefresh trout fillet for dinner tonight.  We stuffed all the food into thetruck and headed out of Whitehorse.  

We drove thru more beautiful Canadian scenery and stopped for dinner at acampground.  Canada has government run campgrounds that typically have acovered picnic shelter.  We’ve used the picnic shelter a few times fordinner out of the rain.  It wasn’t raining when we stopped for dinnertonight, but it was by the time we left.  Yes, more rain (heavysigh).  

We drove for a few more hours and went to find a campsite.  We drove upthe access road to a microwave tower and found a great campsite where someonehad left some bones.  We pulled in and saw the backbone of a large animal, probablya moose.  We didn’t want to camp with bear bait, so we kept going,  Wefound a pull off with a sign; “Notice: You are welcome to camp here. Be sure to remove all garbage and hunting scraps… Garbage can attract grizzlybears and make it more dangerous for others utilizing the area.”  Wehad permission to camp here.  And it’s raining again.

We woke up this morning to hear a light sprinkle of rain on the truck andpanicked.  We packed up our slightly drier chairs and tarp and then madebreakfast.  The clouds are kind of spotty, it doesn’t look like too muchrain, just a little overcast.  

We drove down to an overlook for the Five Fingers Rapids. This is a portion of the Yukon River where several large standing rocks in theriver, separating the river into five smaller channels.  This was a very treacherousportion of the river when this was a major transportation route. Paddleboats called stern wheelers, carried gold and silver ore out of the Yukonand carried liquor, food and passengers into the remote areas of Yukon. Today, fifty years later, its’ a beautiful portion of the river with a woodenviewing platform and stairs taking visitors to the river’s edge.

We also stopped at the Montague House, the ruins of a historicroadhouse.  We chatted for a minute with Doug and Norma from Alberta, Canada. A tour bus arrived and the next thing we knew, we had 75 people stumbling aroundthese ruins with us.  Time to go.

We stopped in Carmacks, YT for gas.  We’ve been paying about $4.00 pergallon here in Canada.  We complained about paying over $3.00 per gallon inCalifornia, but we’d be so excited to see prices in the three dollar rangeagain.  

We finally arrived in Whitehorse, YT, the capitol of the Yukon.  This isby far the largest city we’ve been thru in days.  It even has fast foodrestaurants and a Wal-Mart.  We stopped by the Visitor’s Center and go infoon hotels, hostels and B&B’s.  It’s raining again and we’re looking fora place that’s warm and dry.  We called several places and found AScandia House B&B, run by a wonderful Danish lady Lene Neilson (pronouncedLEE-na).  She has a couple of rooms in her basement she rents.  Wewould share a bath with the other room, but it was not rented so far, so wemight have it all to ourselves.  We checked in quickly and headed back intotown

We went to the 4:30 brewery tour at Yukon Brewing Co.(Ummmm,beer!)  The tour had already started when we got there, so we had to catchup on tasting.  They had some pretty tasty beers.  We tried two orthree and went out to the brewery.  They have a very small operation andonly distribute to the Yukon Territory and a little in British Columbia andAlberta.  We finished up by tasting three or four more beers.  It wasgood, but we decided not to take any with us (and it was $11.00 per sixpack).  

We went back to the B&B and showered and cleaned up a bit.  We wentback into town for the “Frantic Follies” show at8:30.  The Yukon was a famous gold rush area in the late 1800’s and early1900’s.  Gold miners would come into town hungry for entertainment. Vaudeville type shows with pretty girls singing and dancing a high-kickingCan-Can was the order of the day.  The “Frantic Follies” was oncein Dawson City (we saw a similar show advertised there), but they moved to thelarger town of Whitehorse.  It plays every night and twice a day duringpeak season.  They had quite a crowd tonight.  Many tour groups willbook this as part of their tour package.  It was a lot of fun with somereally corny jokes and decent music and humor.

THE SUN IS SHINING!!  We finally have a morning not dreary andraining!  We had our breakfast of eggs and reindeer sausage (leftover forma previous breakfast) and left the cabin.  We walked around Dawson City abit.  This area is famous for the gold rush in 1898 and in some ways, ithasn’t changed much since.  

We drove up to Midnight Dome where the city planned a celebration in the1890’s for the midnight sun on the summer solstice.  But the sun didn’t getthe schedule of events and set about half an hour before midnight and rose againa couple of hours later.  It didn’t stop the party, though.  They havea summer celebration here every year, but they don’t wait for midnight. From Midnight Dome we had a beautiful 360 degree view of the area, with theKlondike River and the City of Dawson below.  We could see the “Top of the WorldHighway” winding up the mountains across the river.  The sun is outand our moods are better.  We drove back down into town.  

We were walking around and stopped into a grocery store and found a fewthings we hadn’t seen before in the US.  Among the strangest things we sawwere cornflakes in chocolate bars and ketchup flavored potato chips.  I’mnot sure if we want to try this stuff or not.  (We did later try theketchup potato chips.  The brand name “Lay’s” tasted like Frenchfries; the No Name brand tasted like powdered ketchup)

We walked several blocks from the Information Center to Jack London’s cabinand interpretive site on the far side of town.  It felt good to get outand walk again after being in the truck for so long.  We sat in on aninterpretive presentation about Dick North and his quest to track the authorJack London’s time spent in the Yukon.  Jack London wrote many books, butnever an autobiography.  Many people have written about Jack London and hismany adventures.  But the year he spent in the Yukon was apparently pivotal indeveloping his stories.  Jack London’s signature was found on theinside of this cabin found decades later out in the Yukon.  The signaturehas been authenticated.  It is believed he would sit with the others in theYukon at that time for gold mining or fur trading and on the long winter nightsas they told tales around the fire, he was developing his thoughts for hisstories.  Dick North has written several books on the life of JackLondon.  He is still alive and in his 70’s and lives near DawsonCity.

We got back to the truck and had lunch, then hit the road.  The sun isstill shining (YES!) as we headed south.  We were traveling thru FirstNation’s Land (Native land) and we weren’t sure of their rules ondispersed camping.  Out of respect for the Native land, we found acampground a few hours from Whitehorse, Yukon Terr., our next destination. At the campground we got out some of our wet gear and laid it out to dry. We had a tarp and 2 folding chairs I was beginning to worry about mold andmildew.  If we  can stay out of the rain, we’ll enjoy the rest of thistrip much more.  We woke up around 2am to see if we could spot the AuroraBorealis, but we had a light cloud cover and didn’t see much. 

…And it’s still raining.   We left our camp and headed intoTok for breakfast.  We also found a laundromat to dry my pillow.  Wewant to get out from under this rain cloud as soon as possible!  We stoppedat Three Bears Grocery for a few supplies and headed for the border (theCanadian Border, that is!).

Our drive along the dirt and gravel road that was “Top of the WorldHighway” would have had beautiful views except for the constant raincloud.  We arrived in Chicken, AKnear the Canadian Border.  Chickenwas named because the two prospectors that founded the town couldn’t spellptarmigan.  Ptarmigan is a bird that was quite prevalent in this area andwas known to fill many a gold miners cook pot.  Chicken has a year roundpopulation of 15, but that swells to 30 during the summer.  There are acouple of restaurants, a couple of shops that sell gifts and Chicken shi-… uh,stuff, and a bar.  We ate at one of the restaurants and bought a couple ofT-shirts and some other Chicken shi-…stuff, supporting this fine town with alittle bit of cash.

We found out something interesting while up here, the Fahrenheit and Celsius temperaturescales cross at minus 40 degrees.  I guess I’ve never thought of minus 40as a real temperature before.  They actually get minus 40 and minus 50 inthe winter here!   Brrrr!!!  We talked to one girl and she saidit was more mild now than when she was younger (not that long ago, she was onlyin her mid-twenties), she remembered it getting minus 50 for a few days inwinter and now it’s only minus 30.  Minus 30 she considered MILD!

We were almost to the Canadian border and we saw the clouds break and arainbow formed over one of the huge valleys with rolling hills below.  Westopped for gas at the last place before Canada and topped off our tank. This guy doesn’t get out much.  He didn’t take credit cards and we didn’thave much American cash, so we scraped together $32.00 and he told us that wasabout 8 gallons of gas (about $4.00 per gallon).  Part of his gas pumpdidn’t work and the total purchase didn’t register on it.  Only the numberof gallons.  But he assured us it was cheaper than Canada.

We crossed the Canadian border and border patrol was in a cloud.  Wecould barely see the “Welcome to the Yukon Territory” sign.  Andit began raining again (sigh).  

We drove along more dirt and gravel roaduntil we came to the Klondike River.  There is no bridge going across,butthey do have a ferry that shuttles cars across the river 24 hours aday.  On the other side of the river we entered Dawson City, YukonTerr.  Thetown began as a gold rush town and is kind of still in that era.  Theyhavedirt and gravel roads, wooden boardwalks between buildings, paddleboatsalongthe river.  Paddleboats were once used to ship out gold and silver oreandto ship in liquor, food and passengers.  There is a casino, “DiamondToothGerties”, that has live shows with Can-can girls.  We thought aboutdoingthis, but we just wanted to get a room, relax and dry out.  

We found an ATM and got some Canadian cash, since we’ll be in Canada for awhile.  We also found a cabin with a kitchenette, so we can do some of ourown cooking and not eat out.  We checked into the Whitehouse cabins righton the Klondike River.  As we were getting our stuff out of the car, we sawthe rain clearing and the great bright orb in the sky appeared just beforesunset.  We haven’t seen the sun since August 10th, while we were on theferry in the Inside Passage!

We were awake about 3am and went out to see if we could see the Aurora Borealis. It seems that the Aurora Borealis is always showing, but you can only see itwhen it’s dark enough.  Summer here is the land of the midnight sun, ourday’s have been from 4am to 11pm.  Not much total darkness.  And, ofcourse, you’d have to have clear skies, something we haven’t seen much of. We went out for a minute in the cold, clear night and even with the streetlights, we could see faint streaks of green in the night sky.  But the fogsoon rolled in and we went back inside to sleep.

Yes, it’s still raining.  The locals have said this is the wettestsummer they’ve seen in twenty years.  It’s been raining in Talkeetna for aweek and a half straight.  We’re going to clean up and try to get out ofhere today.  For a state much larger than Texas, Alaska has very fewroads, main thoroughfares to a  different part of the state.  Andthere are LOTS of streams and rivers.  I looked on a map to see whichbridge may be out and there are dozens of stream crossings between Talkeetna andDenali.  From what we’ve seen with the local flooding, any of them couldcause problems.  

We got out of the Mat-Su Valley with a minimum of road closures.  We sawone lane closed at Willow Creek and several people were watching thebridges.  And it’s still raining.  We backtracked where we had justbeen, past the Musk Ox Farm and overlooks where we got some nice mountain photos(in the  few minutes it wasn’t raining).  We were down to one lane asthey were cleaning up some mudslide damage, trying to keep the main arteryopen.  One huge rock fell after the huge truck went by to shovel the debrisout of the road and traffic wasdodging the rock as best as they could.  It was probably the size of a deskchair!  

We got to Glennallen and found lots ofcars and RVs gassing up and in line for the restrooms.  The clerk theresaid this was the busiest she’s been all summer.  People from Fairbanksthat have come south to Anchorage can’t get back the way they came, they have todrive around the long way to get back.  Add to that people who can’t getthru (like us) and have to get out this way.  We saw an Anchorage newspaperand the photo on the front page was one of the bridges that were out (we foundout two bridges along the road were damaged and closed).  I think one ofthe bridges was at Troublesome Creek (aptly named) that washed out.  It was animpressive amount of damage, all four lanes across had fallen!  Firstreports said the bridge may be out two weeks or more.

We stopped at Tok Junction at a covered picnic area and battled a squirrelfor our dinner.  We finally won.  Teeny-tiny squirrel, I guess theydon’t get very big here.  We drove a little further after dinner and founda dirt road to camp on.   We guessed it was public land, all the signswere down because of construction.  At least we didn’t see any “No Trespassing/Private Property” signs.  

As we crawled into the back of the truck, we found that our truck cap hasbeen leaking.  Not to bad and to be honest, we’ve never been in this muchrain before.  However, my pillow and some clothes were wet and Andrew had acouple of things on his side that were wet.  It’s not so bad to keep usfrom camping, but we’ll be using some trash bags tomorrow.

It’s STILL RAINING!!  We went into Palmer for breakfast.  As we gotcloser to town, the sky began to peek out from the clouds.  We stopped andphotographed the few mountain tops we could see.  The clouds quickly closedin, but it stopped raining for a minute.  We found aplace in Palmer for breakfast with reindeer sausage.  

Next we headed for The Musk Ox Farm.  Itstopped raining long enough for us for the short tour. The Musk Ox Farm in MatanuskaValley, AK is the only domestic musk ox farm in the world.  The musk ox washunted into extinction in Alaska and Canada in the 1800’s.  They werecaptured and brought in from Finland and Norway and domesticated for thisfarm.  The farm combs out the underwool that they shed in the spring. The wool is spun into thread and sent to the villages where the native womenknit beautiful scarves and hats from it in local tribal patterns.  The wool is warmer than sheep’swool and softer than cashmere. The products are beautiful and the proceedscreate income for the subsistence lifestyle that many natives here are stillpracticing.  We spoke to someone at the farm that said that Hatcher PassRoad was closed today due to flooding.  We’re glad we changed our planslast night!

We moved on to Talkeetna and it’s still raining.  Along the way we sawevidence of flooding, rivers and stream outside their banks, some side roadscompletely under water and cars pulled off, residents trying to figure out howthey are getting home.  We got into the tiny town of Talkeetna and foundmore flooding.  The river in town is lined with sandbags.  We werecalling places to find a room for the night and one hotel clerk told us that thebridge heading to Denali was damaged by flooding and closed.  We can’t getto Denali!!  We’ve decided that Alaska doesn’t want us here, so we’ll headout tomorrow, after we visit with Barak and Kim tonight.  We found a roomat the Latitude 62 Degrees Motel and Restaurant.  After dinner, we got amessage from Barak… he’s stuck on the other side of the bridge!  Wearen’t going to see him either!  

This weather stinks!!!  We’ve got toget out of here… if we can.  We’ve heard that they may be closing part of the GlennHighway, the road we got here on, due to flooding and mudslides.  That’sthe only other road out of this area.  If we find that road closed, we’llhave to take a ferry out of Whittier to Valdez and drive north from there. We’ll just have to come back to Alaska another time, this is not a good time tobe here.