Best Wildlife Moment

I promised that I would answer questions.  There was the question as to the best Wildlife Moment or experience.  Now that is hard.  The mother grizzly with the two cubs is the one that is the wallpaper on my laptop.  I believe that for the two of us that is the best.  I also really enjoyed watching the eagle with the salmon at Sitka.  I love seeing wildlife so much that it is hard to pick which one was best.  Watching a fox hunt on a hillside was wonderful but so was watching the mother owl and two owlets in the nest.  Each sighting of wildlife was wonderful. But I will go with the Bear and cubs, of course bears are very special to me.  They are my spirit animal. I did purchase a cup at Denali with Grizzlies on it.  It also says to remember that, "The best experiences of life lie on the path ahead of you."   Thanks for the question.

The Best of the Trip

As promised here is a list of what we thought was the best of the trip in several areas.  If you have a question as to something else as to what we thought was great, please comment and ask our opinion.  As those that know me I am always ready to express my opinion. Which of course is always right.  Here is the list.  There will be a few pictures but many of them are already on the blog.

Lodging: Log Cabin in Talkeetna,  In second place the Halsingland Hotel in Haines.

Meal: Dinner at Ludvig's in Sitka, 2nd place to Perch Lodge south of Denali.

Adventure: Plane flight with Tim from Fire Lake in Eagle River, AK

2nd:  Tundra Wilderness Tour at Denali

Wild Animal The Grizzly Sow and her two year old cubs.  (now the wall paper on my laptop)

Drive: The Marine Highway from Prince Rupert to Haines.

2nd The drive on the Alaska Highway south of Whitehorse, YT

Surprise The Beauty of the Yukon ,   2nd the Vastness of it all

Town Sitka, AK     2nd  Seward, AK

Best Night Laird Hot Springs Provincial Park

Hot Springs Laird Hot Springs

Mary's Best of the Whole Trip: The Flight with Tim and the Marine Highway

JC's Best of the Whole Trip: Fullfilling two life long dreams, seeing the Inland Passage

 and driving the Alaska Highway, previously know as the Alcan Highway.

The totem is from the Totem Park in Sitka, It is one of the very important symbols of Alaska and the First Nations of Alaska.

Yes, there are things we would do different next time.  

Go two weeks later, there were things that were not open, and it was too cold to camp much.

Do more camping.  We really enjoyed the camping. And some of the Parks are very nice.

Take time to ride the train, especially Skagway to Whitehorse.

Go Fishing,

Take a boat trip out of Seward or Whittier.

Spend more time in the Sitka, Whitehorse, Seward, Haines.

Go to Ketchikan

Give our selves more time

So friends and family, the Alaska trip comes to a close.  We will check the blog for a few days to see comments and respond to any questions.  We have had a great trip and hope you have enjoyed it with us.

JC and Mary

Over

The Can-Alaska trip is official over.  We spent the night  in White Bear Lake, MN, where we started 29 days earlier.  I might mention that it is a short 8 day drive from Fairbanks to White Bear Lake.  Now we do stop to look at wildlife, to rest a little each two hours, to see things of interest and to spend long evenings resting from the driving.  We came short of 8400 miles since we left WBL the day after Kathy and Eric's wedding.  But if you add the 350 miles each way to Wayne, we are will over 8400.

While the trip home seemed very long, which it was, it was also very interesting.  The country across Canada was different than what we expected until we got in Manitoba.  We also learned the large and important presence of Ukrainians in central Canada.  The fact that we saw some rain each day of the trip was also a factor to our travel.  We are glad to be home, but we loved the trip.

The best of the trip list will be coming, but it will take a few days to decide and publish.  So don't give up. the ending picture is of Rainbow outside Winnipeg.  A sign of hope.

A travel Day

Tonight we are in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, CA.  We drove today, after a late start, but still got some miles done.  Very much the on the way home mode.  The country side is nice. This is farming and oil country.  We went through an area where Canola is the big crop.  Healthy, even the air seem healthy.  It is so different to see cattle and not wild life.  No wild life today at all.  The first time since we left the USA so many years ago.  Tomorrow we hope to get to Winnipeg.  Then on to White Bear Lake on Sunday.  That will be our 29th day since we left WBL after the wedding.  wow  Kathy and Eric first month anniversary.  Congratulations.

We are staying in the Gold Eagle Resort next to the Gold Eagle Casino.  Yes we had dinner in the Casino, no we did not gamble.  We used the $10 they gave us to eat not gamble.  

I might say the car is doing great.  Loaded down and I mean loaded, it is still doing 38 miles per gallon, or about 10 miles per liter in Canada.  If I drove slower, like 90-95 instead of 115 it would get better milage.  Of course that is kph.  But then I am in Canada.

I do really appreciate the comments.  Thanks for your interest.  After we get home we will post a last blog, telling the  best, the worst, and the things we would do different.  And what we will do next time.  The Picture for today comes from the deck at the Perch Resort at Denali.  We actually had to eat breakfast two days looking at this.  

Truly on the Way Home

Today we saw the end of the Alaskan Highway. When we stopped in the visitor center in Dawson Creek, at the end of journey, they had almost no stuff about having driving the Alaskan Highway. I commented that at Delta Junction on the other end they had lots and lots of stuff about having driven the Highway. The young man there said they did not carry that because only 1% of the people "doing the Highway" go North to South. So not only have we "done" the Alaskan Highway but we did it as one in a hundred do it. Of course I usually do things backward. The only picture of today is the 0 milepost in Dawson Creek. It is not down loaded so I will use another of yesterday's pictures that I wanted to post before but was not able. These are Rock Mountain Sheep. They are one of the three types of Mountain Sheep. There are the Big Horn of the Rockies, the Dall of Denali and the Rock of BC. All very neat. All with beautiful curved horns. This lastest note comes from Valleyview, AB, CA.

Had trouble getting pictures to the earlier blog, so here are the pictures for today.  This is Liard Hot Springs Alpha Pool.  Water enters at the end where I am standing at about 130 F, then flows to the far end.  The surface water is very hot, the bottom (gravel) water is much cooler.  All natural.  There is 1/2 mile board walk from the camp ground to this pool, there is another pool 1/4 mile past this one.

Hot Springs are nice

Last night we camped at Liard Hot Springs Provincial Park in BC.  It is south of Watson Lake if you look on a map.  All natural hot springs.  Wonderful all the way around.  It was a good drive from Whitehorse, with beautiful scenery, bears, moose, and wonderful rivers and streams. A beautiful drive. A highlight of the day was a stop at First Nation Center of the Tlingit, and saw a fiberglass canoe in the traditional style, that nine Tlingit women are going to paddle in the Yukon River Quest, on June 24th from Whitehorse to Dawson City, a 450 mile race.  They expect to take 72-80 hours.  No stops.  Take turns sleeping while others paddle.  There will be several hundred entries, but this will be the only traditional canoe paddled by all women.

We got away from there at 10 this morning but I did not feel very good, so we stopped early today at Ft. Nelson, BC and are staying in a nice Motel.  We needed to do laundry and rest.  So I am resting while Mary is doing Laundry.  During the last 50 miles the land has flatten out and some nice farm land.  I think from here on we get more flat land. 

We did see buffalo (timber Bison to be exact) and rock mountain sheep to day.  Some beautiful streams and mountains before we got to the flatter land.