July 11: Venturing to Jasper

We had breakfast at Smitty’s in Grande Prairie.  Ardith had a breakfast sandwich.  Jim had a Belgian waffle topped with bacon and egg.  He had that with syrup on top – an interesting combination.

We stopped at the largest town between here and Jasper: Grande Cache, Alberta.  It had a visitors’ center and we needed a potty break.  The inside of the visitors’ center had exhibits about the town and its past, worth about 10 or 15 minutes stay.

The interesting part was outside the center.  They had replicas of native wickiups and tipis and explained how contact with plains Indians had resulted in a change of housing from almost entirely wickiup to almost entirely tipi in the 1800s.

They also had ranger stations and other old buildings in various stages of restoration. 

The piece that enabled Jim to remember the town’s name was a giant platform.  Earlier we had learned and forgotten twice that the name of the raised platforms with cabins on top was a cache, a place for woodsmen to store provisions so critters couldn’t get to them and for trappers to store their furs.  Jim has used the word cache for probably 40 years to describe a place of temporary storage, and it is finally sticking that this was a much earlier use of the same French word.

The lawn was speckled with lots of mushrooms, many were ordinary to us, but we independently "discovered" a clump of really interesting ones and reported the fact to each other.

As we rounded a bend on a fairly steep downhill, we saw what seemed to be smoke ahead of us and thought “oh, no, a vehicle on fire in the road”.  The good news, it wasn’t so.  The bad news is that it was an unnamed industrial plant spewing out something stronger than water vapor.

We drove through a lot of nice country, but it turned spectacular when we got to Jasper National Park.  Below is the first picture Jim took after we entered the park.  He took a lot more scenic pictures today, but we will be saving those and combining them with other pictures of an incredible place in the next blog posting.  This may take a few days, because we have about 1,500 picture of Jasper and it will take a while to sort through them and tell a coherent story about the park.

We checked into the Maligne Lodge (pronounced ma-leen) in the town of Jasper and the really great clerk, Jesse, told us that we had our room upgraded at no cost, due to a tour bus coming in.  They gave us the second largest unit in the place.  We had a really nice living room, a very decent kitchenette, good bath and a solid door connecting to the bedroom with a king sized bed. 

The room was just above the indoor pool in the living room side and had a tiny view of mountains from the bedroom.  The view of the pool was nice, but the heavy chlorine smell and high humidity ensured that we closed our door rapidly when we entered.

While we were exploring the town, we passed a gas station where a family had their 3 kids working diligently to clean the big windows in their RV.  A boy was working on the picture window in the rear, a girl was working side windows and another had climbed onto the hood to scrub the windshield, a task we knew was very necessary.  They seemed to enjoy their tasks.

One of the restaurants suggested by our lodge clerk was Papa George’s.  We decided to try it and were super pleased.  To start with, it had a nice view (albeit, through a parking lot) of mountains.

The food was decidedly different and enticing.  They had a decent number of game meat dishes on the menu and Jim is always up for something different.  He chose two appetizers as his meal.  One was called Elk pot pie.  It had elk loin, wild mushrooms, pearl onions and a wine sauce topped with puff pastry.   It was amazing.  His second dish was Crispy Alberta Boar Belly.  Think of a super thick piece of bacon with a tangy taste.  It was accompanied by a sweet-tangy apple cranberry chutney and mixed root vegetables fried in a duck sauce.  The latter was one of the best vegetable dishes Jim has ever had.  Ardith had a rack of Australian Lamb with brandy and apricot pudding (think Yorkshire pudding, not vanilla).  Her dish also had charred asparagus and an excellent potato salad.

“If the meal was this good we must try their desserts.”  We did and weren’t at all disappointed.  Ardith had Coffee and Chocolate Bread pudding.  The special thing about this superb dish is that its “bread” was crushed croissants.  Jim’s great ginger crème brulee was topped with caramelized apples.  Even the cookie was amazing.

July 10 - on the road again

Before Ardith went to bed last night, she noticed the alarm was set and turned it off.  Shortly after 5AM, she heard the alarm go off in the room above us, at 5:30, she heard him leave by the noise on the steps next to our room. Ardith put a pillow over her head to block out the stair noise.  Jim heard none of that.  At 6:10, he heard a burbling sound.  He decided that Ardith had set up the coffee maker (which she had not done) and he went back to sleep.  5 minutes later, Ardith heard the sound, woke Jim and said that something was being dragged outside.  He told her it was the coffee maker and shut it off.  Someone of the previous occupants had set it to go off automatically and the cleaning staff had not turned it off.  At 7:15, Ardith heard a beeping sound and woke Jim to tell him that something was making noise. She thought it was his cell phone alarm. It turned out to be the alarm clock in extra room that had gone off.  It had also been previously set and not turned off by the cleaning staff.   We gave in and got up. There was nothing else left to go off!

There was nice scenery along the road, but not special enough to stop for pictures and no special wildlife.  The one thing that amazed us was thousands of acres of a crop with brilliant yellow flowers.  We forgot to ask anybody what it was. (One of my friends recently told me it was canola.)

 

Our only stop today other than a quick undistinguished lunch was in Dawson Creek, British Columbia.  Dawson Creek is Mile 0 of the Alaska Highway and we had just driven the whole 1,390 miles.  The city has a monument where the highway used to start, just a few blocks from its current location. 

Jim also saw some fun murals.

We stopped at the visitors’ center and spent over an hour in its small museum.   There were lots of artifacts that showed life there long ago (75-100 years). 

Jim couldn’t understand why they put a lot of modern (it seems we had one of those just a few years ago) things in a museum, though.

Ardith was impressed by a doll house built by a local woman out of scrounged materials.  She made a replica of her girlhood home from the 1930s.

Our favorite thing was a great video about the building of the Alaska Highway.  The video was edited from films made in the 1940s, most of the actual construction.

The United States had wanted a highway to Alaska for many years, to connect the then 48 states with its huge Territory to the north.  The Canadian government refused or stalled for decades.  Then World War II broke out and President Franklin Roosevelt convinced the Canadian authorities that it was necessary for the defense of both countries.  Canada insisted that the US pay the full cost and turn the road over to them after the war ended.  The US Army, with the help of some civilians, built a “pioneer road”  in well under a year (spring to fall 1942), with huge obstacles overcome.  The next year, a force of mostly civilian contractors, under the supervision of the Public Roads Administration, rebuilt most of the really troublesome stretches, for example, replacing log bridges with steel bridges.

We ended up in Grand Prairie for the evening. Jim was totally surprised by the size of the city.  He had looked for it in the AAA Western Canada Tourguide, but didn’t find it.  The problem was that it is in Alberta, not British Columbia.  Another surprise was that there was another time zone change, the 3^rd in 4 days.  Again, they started looking for dinner at what they thought was 8PM but was really 9.  All the non-chain places were closed.  We had another delicious dinner at another Earl’s, somewhat to Jim’s dismay. Jim had a black bean soup and a nice salad.  Ardith had Chicken Parmesan with beets and carrots.

July 9 From Yukon to BC

Ardith was hearing sounds of the metal bridge at night, thinking it was an exhaust fan.  The bridge was very near the motel.

We made a stop at Watson Lake Visitors’ Center to make sure the Alaska Highway had been re-opened from a large rockslide of about 10 days ago.  It had been, so we didn’t need to divert to Cassiar Highway.  Adjacent to the center was the Signpost Forest, a collection of over 71,000 street and traffic signs from all over the world.  This was started by a US Army private in 1942 when the Alaska Highway was being built.  He was supposed to repair a signpost and decided to add the distance to his home town.  The idea has gone viral since.

Early in Jim’s driving, he saw a bear on the side of the road.  Ardith had been looking down.  Later, the reverse happened.  Then, we sporadically saw bears simultaneously, including black bears and a mother grizzly with 2 cubs. 

We saw a bison here and a bison there, then, shortly after enjoying bison burgers for lunch, we came on a herd of over 100 bison including dozens of cubs.  They were on both sides of the road and nearly every passing car stopped for a while to watch them. They also crossed the road at a very slow pace.  They certainly don’t have any fear of traffic.

We saw the first deer in this trip.

 Caribou like to avoid humans and this one did his best to keep its distance.

The Alaska Highway weaves in an out of the border between Yukon and British Columbia.  At one point, there were signs indicating Stone Sheep possible along the stretch of road ahead of her.  Jim mentioned that to Ardith.  A mile or 2 later (oh, Canada, 2 or 3 kilometers later), Jim said “there’s one”.  Ardith said “one what”.  She said she didn’t expect the sheep to be the color of the local stones and missed seeing that one, but we found a few more as we progressed.  Ardith had been keeping her eyes glued to the road on the lookout for animals crossing the road.  She had been doing a great deal of the driving on this trip and has no desire to have a close personal interaction between the Prius and an animal.

We crossed one of two continental divides.  The water from one side flows to the Pacific Ocean, the other side flows to the Arctic.

We spent the night in Fort Nelson, BC.  We ended up with a room that could sleep 6 including a second bedroom.  We were happy that there was a boiler room next to us – no noise from there.  Then we realized that the stairs were next to us.  We heard every step of every person going to the second floor.  At least the internet connection was solid and a reasonable speed and Jim could work with lights on after Ardith went to sleep.

We started looking for a place to have dinner shortly before 7.  Ardith said she wanted to go to Boston Pizza, which is just a block from our motel, after so much time on the road today.  Jim said no, that is a chain.  We drove around and found 4 local places that closed at either 5 or 7 on Saturday night.  We ended up back at Boston Pizza.  Jim had a Baja salad, Ardith an individual pizza.  They split a yummy toffee pudding for dessert.  It was surprising that the town closed up so early on a Saturday night.  Very different from home when Saturday night is a very busy one for restaurants.

July 8 - traveling through Yukon

We were treated to great scenery all morning.  Mt. Logan, at 19,671 feet, the 2^nd highest peak in North America, and other peaks in the St. Elias Range presented themselves to us in full splendor.

There were also wonderful peaks in the Coast and Cassair mountain ranges.

We also saw our first cotote.

We stopped at Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, and ate in a deli where a lot of Russians were working. We have noticed a lot of Russians working in Alaska.  I suppose that’s to be expected since Sarah Palin said she could see it.  Jim had a specialty hotdog and Ardith had a bagel with ham, pineapple and cheese baked on it.

The SS Klondike in Whitehorse is a paddle wheel boat that was used to transport people and supplies up and down the Yukon River.  It was moved to a site on land and restored to its 1937-40 appearance.  

We watched a movie in a tent on a barge.  It featured lots of old movie clips that showed how the paddle wheel boats were used.  

We then took a self guided tour of the boat. On the lowest deck, we saw things ranging from the boiler and distribution system to the arms that drove the paddle wheel to crew quarters and to lots of containers representing various types of cargo they might carry.

On the next deck up, was largely devoted to 1^st class passengers and food preparation.

The top deck was where 2nd class passengers slept and ate.  It also housed the Master’s quarters and the wheelhouse.

We took a 4pm boat ride on the MV Schwatka, going on a portion of the Yukon River. The river here has even more float planes than we saw in Fairbanks.

The boat passed through a very tight, rocky cliff lined channel, and through an area filled with whirlpools. 

Jim got pictures of several bald eagles.  One was perched on a cliff instead of the expected tree.

 

The water was a deep turquoise blue color, a beautiful contrast to the dark green pine trees.

 

There were perhaps a few thousand swallows’ nests in one section of cliffs.  We could see the birds going in and out, but they were much too fast for the camera.  We also enjoyed wildflowers clinging tightly to cliff faces.  It is amazing that they survive the periodic flooding.

On board, Jim chatted with a couple about our age who had driven from New Mexico.  They said they have had rain nearly every day on their trip.  We have had the good fortune of having almost none.  About a third of the way through our trip, it started to rain - the first we had seen since Denali National Park, although we had seen and heard predictions of showers most days. A lot of the people on board headed down to the lower deck to join Ardith who sat there from the start, sure there would be rain.  It poured for about half of our hour and twenty minute drive to Teslin.  Ardith was not comfortable with the limited visibility due to the rain.  When Jim was driving earlier in the day, Ardith was concerned that Jim couldn’t see due to the dust from the freshly-graveled road, quite a contrast in reasons for blindness.

We passed the 7,000 mile mark for this trip on our car today.  The tire pressure sensor light went off soon after we arrived in Whitehorse.  Jim bought a portable tire pump that plugs into the car’s lighter socket before we embarked on our adventure.  He added about 1 or 2 psi to one tire and the others were exactly where they should be.  The blinking light on the dash is driving Ardith nuts.  Jim just ignores it.

As we were leaving Whitehorse, we passed a cut-out of a police car.  It is the only police car waiting for speeders that we have seen since we left the Victoria area about 4 weeks ago.  We have added a lot of miles since.

We stayed and ate at the Yukon Motel in Teslin.  Our room was clean and comfortable; we had a nice view, but bad Wi-Fi.  Last night, coverage came and went with nothing in the morning.  The motel had a restaurant and gift shop associated with it.  If you passed through the gift shop, there was a gallery featuring stuffed animals in the dioramas that Jim enjoys, but which have been phased out of a lot of museums.

July 7 - Traveling theAlaska Highway

The next town south of Fairbanks is North Pole.  The place is totally Christmas-themed including most street names.  The only church we saw was St. Nicholas Catholic Church.

We stopped in Delta Junction which is the northernmost point of the Alaska Highway.

Just below Delta Junction, the main oil pipeline crosses the Alaska Highway.  It wasn’t feasible to stop to get a picture of that, but the visitors’ center had a display of pipeline-oriented signs and objects outside.  Jim especially liked the “pig” which is used to clean the inside of the pipe and inspect it.

We stopped at a restaurant in Delta Junction called Taste of Europe that had just opened two weeks ago.  Many of the items on the menu were Eastern European.  Ardith had a cup of borscht that was absolutely delicious.  Jim had Uzbek Plove – seasoned rice with beef, carrots, onions and garbanzo beans.  It had a very distinctive central Asian flavor that Jim really enjoyed.  The place was nicely decorated including 2 very good paintings by the owners’ 18 year old niece.  We were speculating if such a nice place would survive in the middle of nowhere.  It would probably thrive in DC or Annapolis.

We entered Canada again but didn’t discover the time change until looking at the clock in our motel room that night.   While Canada has many cultural similarities to the US, it is distinctly different.  Most of the differences Jim especially likes, starting with the most obvious – nearly full use of the metric system.  He also likes the fact that there are no dollar bills, but they do use 1 and 2 dollar coins.  The ones are nicknamed loonies because they have a likeness of a loon on them.  Like the US, they still need to abolish the penny, though.  Most prices, except in international chains, are in even multiples of 5 cents.

Another difference is in vocabulary.  The main thing for tourists is to remember Washroom vs. Restroom.

Jim really likes the fact that almost all the restaurants he has used in Canada automatically bring honey when you order hot tea. In Maryland, most restaurants don’t even have it available.

This route put us back on wild roads with beautiful scenery.  It is evident that they have been working graveling the roads since our trip over them 4 weeks ago.  They are better this time although we have to watch the portions that have not been finished, and dealing with dust from the fresh gravel makes visibility a bit challenging.

We caught a few glimpses of Mt. McKinley and its friends in the Alaska range, but McKinley itself was only vaguely visible through thick stands of evergreens.

We stayed in the Talbot Arm Motel, Destruction Bay, with an attached restaurant that we had eaten in on our way up through Canada.  Ardith thought that was a pretentious name until she discovered that the area we were in was called Talbot Arm of the bay.  The view of the water from the restaurant and motel room was quite impressive.

We had a slow, but persistent internet connection, so Jim as able to do his thing.