Alaska Trip 2011: The Road to Whitehorse

This is page 14 of our Alaska 2011 trip journal. Click here for the first page. If you want to bookmark this journal, http://jeanne-travels.blogspot.com always links to the newest page.

Trip Overview

Now that I have figured out how to add Google Maps to the blog pages, I thought it might be nice to post an overview of part of the trip, to help put things in perspective. This is the long stretch of highway between Shelby, Montana, and Whitehorse, Yukon.

If you are looking at this in email, you might not see the map. In that case, just click on "View Larger Map", and it will bring up the map in your browser.



View Larger Map

A. Shelby, MT Last stop before entering Canada
B. Calgary, BC First stop in British Columbia
C. Edmonton, BC Capital of British Columbia
D. Dawson Creek, BC Start of the Alaska Highway
E. Watson Lake, YT First stop in Yukon Territory
F. Whitehorse, YT Klondike Highway crosses Alaska Highway

Whitehorse is a junction point of sorts. There are multiple paths you can take north across Canada to get to Alaska, but they all eventually end up in Whitehorse. Then from Whitehorse there are multiple routes to go on into Alaska. So this is not the last time we will see Whitehorse.

Please let me know if the maps are working for you, and if they are helpful.

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Alaska Trip 2011: May 10-15 - On the Road Again

This is page 4 of our Alaska 2011 trip. The first page is here. After lollygagging in North Dakota for a couple days, it was time to get back on the road and continue our journey northwest.

Montana



We spent two days getting across Montana, spending Tuesday night at Glasgow, and Wednesday night at Shelby, about 15 miles south of the Canadian border. It was still raining on Tuesday, but Wednesday cleared up, and might have been one of our nicest travel days so far.

We spotted these pronghorn in the field behind the campground, not too far from the highway. Thursday, we took a day to refuel, restock, and regroup before heading into Canada.

Canada

We headed for Alberta on Friday the 13th. We must have picked the right day to cross - we heard of delays of 3 hours or more a couple weeks before that. Apparently they were inspecting all of the RVs that crossed the border that day. But today, we had less than 10 minutes in line, and just a few questions when we got to the gate, so it was a pretty quick crossing. So far we have been lucky, but I suppose one of these days it will be our turn. The luck of the draw, so to speak.

Heading north, we ended up at Calgary right at rush hour (bad idea), and the highway pretty much turned into a parking lot at times. Live and learn. When we got to the north side of town, we were ready to stop for the night. The wind was starting to pick up too, but it was a tail wind, so it was not too bad (yet).

No problems with rain here - the humidity was about 13%. That's dry.

We had the same tailwind on Saturday, though it was getting a lot stronger. We managed to find a bypass around Edmonton to avoid most of the city traffic, but at that point the highway was going to go west for a while, which would have made it a cross wind instead of tail wind. Once again, time to stop for the night. We planned an early start for Sunday, as the winds seemed to be getting heavier as the day progressed. They said it was unusual for the wind to be out of the south like that.

We found this interesting sundial along the highway somewhere north of Edmonton. It was a scale model of a grain elevator at the center, with big rocks to mark the hours. (Oh, and a geocache nearby.)

Continuing northward, we saw what looked like clouds at first. As we got closer, we could see that it was actually smoke, quite a bit of it. We were guessing forest fire, and a large one at that. At one point, we coud even see the orange glow from the flames. Thankfully, we were upwind, so the smoke was not bad on the road (yet). Later that day, we learned that there were indeed massive forest fires in the area, fueled and spread by the strong south and southeast winds we were experiencing. We also learned that the fire we saw was not the worst. The worst one was at Slave Lake, farther north from where we were. That one managed to engulf a small town.

As we got father west, the smoke from the fire started to catch up with us. When it got to be time to stop for the night, it was pretty thick. So this time, instead of cutting our day short, we extended it, in hopes we could get past it. We decided to go ahead and try to make it to Dawson Creek. Even though we would be late getting there, we would still have at least a couple hours of daylight.

We did drive out of the smoke as we got farther west, as you can see in these shots at a town called Beaverlodge. But the flags still give you a pretty idea how much wind there was. At this location, we were not in the path of the smoke cloud.

We crossed into British Columbia for the first time, and continued up the road toward Dawson Creek. Unfortunately, the cloud caught up with us again when we got close to Dawson Creek. It was much more dissipated though, so we crossed our fingers and hoped for the best.

Next: The Alaska highway

Tomorrow we explore Dawson City, and Tuesday we start up the Alaska Highway, which goes for about 1500 miles across British Columbia, Yukon Territory, and finally Alaska.

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Vacation 2009 - Waterton Lakes

This is page seven of our vacation 2009 blog. The first page is here.

Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park

Glacier National Park, and its Canadian cousin, Waterton Lakes National Park, combine to form Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. What's ironic is that even though the two parks share a border and a combined name, you have to drive outside the park to get from one to the other. But there are places within the park that you must drive outside to get to, so I suppose it is not so exceptional.

Entering the Park

Sunday morning, we got up early for our excursion to Waterton Lakes. Going through Glacier would be slow, particularly with the ongoing construction, so we drove around the outside of the park to the entrance on the east side. Waterton Lakes was beautiful, and once we got away from the village of Waterton, a little less busy than Glacier. It was definitely worth the time to get there.

Once you get past the port of entry at Chief Mountain, you are pretty much in the park, though the entry station is down the road nearer to the village of Waterton. Somehow we failed to get a picture of Chief Mountain, which, like many of the glacial mountains, is flat-topped. But we did get this picture at an overlook on the way in.

Prince of Wales Lodge

The highlight of the village of Waterton is the Prince of Wales Lodge, which sits atop a hill overlooking the town. The view of the village, the lake, and the surrounding mountains was exceptional.

The two Waterton lakes, like the lakes in Glacier national Park, are natural lakes, formed by the glaciers. The glaciers pushed rocks and soil, carving out valleys, and as they receded, the ridges they left behind formed natural dams. Most glacial lakes are long and narrow, as you can see in this picture.

Two more views from behind the lodge:

Red Rock Canyon

After a chat with the people at the visitor center, we decide to start with a drive down the Red Rock Canyon Road. Traffic is light, and once again, the scenery is beautiful.

So far on this trip we have not seen much wildlife, other than pronghorn along the road in Wyoming and Montana on the way up from Denver. Imagine our surprise when we rounded the corner and saw this bear sauntering down the road. It turned and disappeared off the side of the road before we got to it. the pictures were taken through the windshield.

There was a trail at the end of the road, but we did not take it, as we were somewhat limited on time.

We had another bear sighting on the way out - munching berries along the road. This was about the same location as the other, so we assume it was the same bear. We saw another bear in this area a little farther down the road, but we were not able to get a good picture of it.

And another beautiful view along the road. Besides the wildlife, which I enjoy for a different reason, this is probably my favorite picture in this park.

Cameron Lake

The other drive we took was to Cameron Lake, another scenic drive. The first picture is a monument marking the first oil well in the region, plus some wildflowers in the area.

We spotted this deer at a picnic area along the road. While we were there, some guy came zooming into the area, totally unaware that she was there. I'm surprised it didn't scare her off. She kept a close eye on him, but didn't bolt, at least not while we were there. You can see the guy in the last picture - he is down by the creek, totally oblivious to what is right beside him.

This is a terrible picture, but I couldn't resist including it. It shows what can happen when you use an autofocus camera, and try to take pictures through the windshield. Notice what it focused on instead of the deer. I saw it go out of focus just as I snapped the picture, but didn't realize why until I got a better look at the picture.

Cameron Lake is another beautiful lake formed by the glaciers. I'm surprised that this picture came out at all, as we were looking almost directly into the sun. There was a little visitor center here with interesting storyboards describing the area
It's interesting that when you get to this lake, you have curved around southward, and are back within a few miles of the Montana border. But the road ends at the lake and goes no further. I don't think it did even before they tightened up on border crossing locations.

On the way back from Cameron Lake, we spotted one more overlook deserving of a picture.

Time To Head Back

We took a quick drive through the Bison Paddock, but then had to head back toward the border. They warned us on the way in that the gate closes at exactly 6:00 p.m., even if there are still people in line. If we miss that, we either sleep in the car, or drive a couple hundred miles out of the way to a port of entry that stays open all night. We did get a picture at one more overlook on the way out - the Maskinonge wetlands.

Waterton Lakes is a much smaller park than Glacier. Though we didn't have time for any nature trails, I think we saw about as much of it as you can see from the road. It was also our most successful day of wildlife viewing so far on the trip.

Many Glacier

After going back through customs (yes, they let us back in!) we stopped at Many Glacier on the way back. This is another one of those areas that you can only get to from outside the paark. There was a beautiful stream that ran beside the road, but by this time, we had taken so many pictures of beautiful streams that we resisted the urge to take more this time. We saw a bear and some sheep or mountain goats high on the mountainside, but they were too far away to even think about a picture.

Next Page: Polebridge