Off we go to Alaska! Below is the Mackinac Bridge we crossed to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Then we caught Hwy 2 and headed west.
Karen sporting her new bifocals. Found out I finally need glasses to "crisp up" those faraway images when my eyes get tired. I don't wear them all the time as my cheater readers still do the job when I'm reading anything up close.
Jason finishing up his birthday meal at Caarras and Tequila Mexican restaurant in Devil's Lake, North Dakota. Food was pretty good!
Rugby, ND is the 'Geographical Center of North America". This rock cairn notes the location. It just happens to be in the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant in town.
The Northern Lights Info Center used to send colored lights into the sky with these tubes. It's broken now but we stayed here for the night.
Vulcan, Alberta is a Star Trek nirvana town. Especially if you're a Spock fan. Here is a bust of Leonard Nimoy and his handprint with the Vulcan greeting of the split fingers.
Inside the visitor center is a Star Trek museum, complete with costume and props. I heard a similar museum shut down in Las Vegas and this place got much of the inventory.
Even the rug at the entrance is a trekkie item.
The Visitor Center in Vulcan looks like a space ship.
Calgary, Alberta has a bunch of sculptures along the pedestrian walkway of Stephen St. downtown. I liked this lady, one of a circle of women.
Cool metal horse made of different machine parts.
Cute little businessman with briefcase.
Two businessmen having a discussion? They reminded us of the Botero artwork in Colombia.
Metal tree sculptures line the walkway.
This funky tree reminded us of the baobab trees in Madagascar.
One of the feral bunnies roaming the fields in Alberta.
Karen sitting in a huge metal sculpture wall in the town of Rocky Mountain House.
Grand Prairie boasts the largest sundial in the continent, if not the world.
Beaverlodge, a town not far down the road boasts this 15' beaver.
They thought it might increase tourism and give the town a reason to be there.
The start of the Alaska Highway is Dawson Creek. This signpost is covered in stickers and we added one of ours to the mix.
This is us at the beginning of the Alaska Highway in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, Canada, right next to that sticker sign above.
The actual Mile Marker 0 is a block and a half from the sign, in the middle of an intersection in town.
Taylor had this carving of a gold panner at the visitor center. We met another vanlifer at Ft. Nelson who had an extra gold pan he was looking to give away to someone who needed it. He gave it to me, along with a tiny glass bottle to keep my gold in when (not if) I find it.
The gold panner carving.
Jason eating one of the many burrito meals. So colorful when they get dressed up.
Our first bison siting in Canada and it was a mama and her calf, loping along the side of the road.
More wood bison next to the road. They just look at us as we pass them by. They like to eat the grass on the sunny roadsides. Easier travel for them, too.
The snowmelt is still flooding low places as we pass into the Northwest Territories.
This is a rock wall at the rest area welcoming us to the NW Territories. Unusual.
The tannins stain the waters a deep tea color.
Bison taking a poop along the roadway. We saw lots of the piles left behind by many of these animals.
We stopped at a local dump, thinking we might see a bear. Jason takes me to all the nice places, eh?
Not our first bear sighting, but the first one I caught on camera.
The Tetsa River Campground and Lodge boasts great cinnamon buns. The lady at the Taylor Visitor Center recommended these as the best.
The advertised greatness of their cinnamon buns.
Jason digging into his bun.
Just looking at this picture makes my mouth water. They really were an awesome treat!
A beaver pelt decorated one of the walls. Lots of interesting knickknacks inside the place to look at while waiting for our cinnamon buns.
A lovely view from the road. I liked the aquamarine color of the melting area on the ice.
So far, we haven't spotted a moose other than on many road signs like this one.
The pretty teal waters of Muncho Lake. It's still frozen over except at the edges.
Stopped at a roadside. What views.
More grandeur that the camera really doesn't capture. This is a rocky delta river wash.
Bison relaxing in the morning along the roadside.
One of the highlights was the Liard River Hot Springs. A geothermal vent spews out near-boiling water from a rocky outcrop (near the center of the pic) and people fan the cooler water from below to make it whatever temp they like. Water from the marsh drips in from the green along the edge.
Looking the other way towards the cooler waters where lots of families spent the time.
A cold rain fell while we were soaking and the pools developed a bit of a fog.
The bottom of the water is covered in small rocks. A local challenge is to place a rock on the outcrop where the hot water enters the pool. It was too hot to get that close for me. And a park employee made an appearance and reminded us all that we weren't supposed to move the rocks at all.
The twin spillways near the cooler end of the pool allow the water to escape into the river and keeps the water level of the pool fairly constant. Liard Hot Springs were magical!
We parked at the end of the old Liard Airstrip and a guy came through and gathered a bunch of bleached bones. We didn't even know they were out there, but when we strolled over to the area after he left, I found lots of vertebrae and this jawbone with teeth still in it. Don't know what animal it was from, but we found big rib bones and more spine at the other end of the 4000' runway, too.
A bison calf gets milk from the mama bison. Note that even the female bison have sharp curved horns.
Karen selfie along Lower Rancheria River. Jason in the background.
The marker between British Columbia and Yukon Territory. The oval signpost in the background is one of the Historical Mile Posts denoting points of interest from the building of the Alaska Highway.
Welcome to the Yukon signpost. Yes, we added one of ours to the mix, down in the lower right hand corner.
The Sign Post Forest in Watson Lake, BC. This place blew my mind! It was started by a homesick worker while working on the Alaska Highway. He posted a sign for his hometown and it grew from there. Now there are over 90,000 signs from all over the world and this is now a National Historic Site or UNESCO Heritage site. The locals keep adding more posts as necessary and folks just keep tacking up more signs! It's Huge and growing.
I thought this one was cute.
The posts meander along in swerving rows that would take days to peruse properly.
Merritt is the place where we sometimes watch dirt track oval races near our cottage in Michigan, so we plastered a sticker on it. We didn't know about this in advance to bring a sign to post.
Jason climbed up to place a sticker on the Roscommon Village Limit sign we spotted. Not sure if it's Roscommon, Michigan or Ireland.
Caribou nuggets scattered on the ground.
Camping at the base of a bridge is one of our favorite locales. Pretty and not much traffic at night. Smart folks don't drive around here at night because there are so many animals along the roads.
The scenery along the Alaska Highway is stunning in so many places. What is so nice is the lack of buildings and telephone poles and people for such a distance.
The Canadian Rockies are so pretty.
We hit a nasty pot hole and dented the rims of two wheels. Luckily, the tires still held air. Jason later rotated the tires in Whitehorse and when we went to add air, the tire store guy found the valve stem inside had broken and he couldn't stop the air from rushing out. His foreman replaced the valve with a few quick twists and we were on our way again.
Muncho Lake with pyramidal Simpson Peak in the background.
A caribou along the road. We only saw them in ones or twos, not the large herds we'd heard and read about around here.
We camped in the parking area here at the base of the Nisutlin Bay Bridge, near Teslin, Yukon.
First Nation peoples have claimed this land for centuries.
A famous carver, Keith Wolf Smarch carved thes large totems to represent the different clans. This one is the Raven.
The Beaver.
The Wolf.
The Frog.
Just outside of Whitehorse, we saw a sign for a rock shop and we stopped in. These old license plates, especially the ones shaped like polar bears, were as intriguing as the rocks.
Metal sculptures at the Visitor Center in Whitehorse.
A metal sculpture of a Dall sheep at the visitor center in Whitehorse.
