Dear friends and blog followers,update for the week of 6/12/2011
Our last entry took us to the border and into Calgary. This will chronicle another week of adventures along the ALCAN highway. This is really where the historical travel starts, but we'll need to get to Dawson Creek, BC.
For pictures and descriptive subcaptions click here
6/12/2011
We traveled from Calgary to Edmonton, AB, then to the West Edmonton Mall the largest in North America. It lives up to big as it has a theme park and almost anything else inside. The girls shopped and shopped and the hours got away from us. Brad and I had some maintenance and other projects to do and that filled our day. We decided to just spend the night in the parking lot after the security people said it would be OK.
6/13/2011
A travel day from Edmonton to Grande Prairie. The day light is now getting much longer. We don't see the sunrise or the sunset. Sun is about 20 hours a day and with twilight, there is not a real darkness. Brad bought some material at the hardware store to darken his windows for sleep time. Grand Prairie is a busy town with lots of stuff going on. We stayed at the WM with a petty much a full parking area.
6/14/2011
Another travel day except now we are experiencing the beauty of the spring along the ALCAN. Miles of wild flowers adorn the highway and high lite the vistas seen through our windshield. And then the wild life such as bear, wolf, wood bison, moose, birds, and people. The humans may be the most interesting. Each evening we select that special place along the road to make camp. The view in the evening is with the sun high in the west and in the morning the sun will be high in the east. Just can't describe some of the views.
We spent the night a historic provincial park called Kiskatinaw at the 21 mile post where the curved wooden bridge spans the Piece river. This was an original work camp in 1943.
6/15/2011
Another travel day north and west. We drove to Fort Nelson and went to the visitor center. This is another boom town from mining and oil related activities. Lot of new construction and hotels. We finished the day by driving about 30 miles north to a large pull-out where we would spend the night.
The cars and the trailers were very dirty and needed washing. We used river water to bucket wash everything. The river was running hard and fast with big snow chunks floating by from the snow melt.
I went outside at 0300 hrs and took some pictures. See this link for the picture made in "land of the midnight sun".
6/16/2011
Our target destination for today is Laird Hot Spring provincial park. It is a popular place with a natural hot springs. We enjoyed it in 2009. After setting up at the camp site and eating, we walked the quarter mile to the spring and got in the very hot water. This is a wide spot in the river and has been in service for a long time. I think it was close to midnight and had plenty of day light to return about 0130 hours. Read about it here.
6/17/2011
Another travel day and today is the Watson lake visit. Watson Lake is known world wide because of the Sign Post Forest. Started with a sign painter during the highway construction and continues today with about 70 thousand sign from all around the world. Read the Wiki about the Sign Post Forest here. Enjoyed a few hours there and drove about 30 miles north where we spent the night in a pull out along with one other traveler.
6/18/2011
Today we are heading for Whitehorse, YT and to the Walmart to stock up with stuff. Plan to spend a couple of days there to visit the local attractions. I pick up with that on the next addition of our travel blog.
Until next time
John and Barbara on the road
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