The Alaska Highway

We left Grande Prairie this morning in the rain to begin a short driving day, but one that was filled with the excitement of starting a new adventure.  This is a strange phenomenon of a trip like this.  There are so many parts to the whole that each little piece is like a separate milestone or achievement and is exciting all by itself.  There was the excitement of leaving Nashville, the excitement of crossing the Canadian border, and now the excitement of finally being on the Alaska Highway.

Dawson Creek is only about 80 miles from Grande Prairie.  Even with the light rain and a stop at Beaverlodge, we were there in less than 2 hours.  It might be said that all roads lead to Dawson Creek.  That’s not really true, but at least 4 major highways connect in Dawson Creek.  One of those highways, 97, is more popularly known as the Alaska Highway.  Because Dawson Creek was connected by those roads as well as the Northern Alberta Railroad, it became the staging area for the Alaska Highway.

The Alaska Highway got built as a result of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  There had been talk of a road connecting Alaska with the lower 48 as early as the 1930s, but nothing was done.  The bombing of Pearl Harbor lit a fire under the powers that were and the ALCAN (the military acronym for Alaska-Canada Highway) became a major priority--a matter of national security to defend Alaska from enemy attack.  Construction officially started on March 9, 1942 and, working from dawn to dark seven days a week, crews laid down a rough road some 1400 miles long in just over 8 months.

Today, we rolled into town on highway 43 and made our way to the Visitor Information Centre.  We picked up brochures and maps of various places along our route including as far away as Inuvik in the Northwest Territories.  In the Information Centre is a small museum and they also have a movie describing the construction of the highway.  Both are very good, but we had seen both on our previous trip so bypassed that today.  Instead, we walked a block downtown to visit the Alaska Highway House, a newer museum.  It was small, but nice.

Mile "0"

After lunch in the Visitor Centre parking lot we finally hit the road.  We hadn’t gotten started good until we had to make a side trip.  The highway has been rerouted over the years as improvements have been made.  At mile 20, there is a short section of the original route which leads to the Kiskatinaw River Bridge.  This historic bridge is “the only original timber bridge built along the highway that is still in use today”.  The curved bridge is 531 feet long.

We finally made it to Walmart at Fort St. John mid-afternoon.  In 1942, Fort St John became the field headquarters for troops working on the highway.  We’ll be here just one night and move on to Fort Nelson tomorrow.

GAS REPORT:  We filled up in Grande Prairie this morning.  Gas was the cheapest we’ve paid since we first entered Canada.  Gas was $4.92 US per gallon.  Diesel was $4.43.  Shortly past Grande Prairie when we crossed into British Columbia, gas went up 10 cents a liter.

CRITTER COUNT:  We didn’t see any wildlife today, probably due to all the small communities and the 3 larger towns we were driving through.  The only thing that came close to wildlife was the big beaver at Beaverlodge.

That’s all for our first day on the Alaska Highway.  Thanks for tagging along.

Hinton to Grande Prairie

We had an uneventful 200 mile drive today from Hinton to Grande Prairie.  It was a pretty drive through rolling hills covered by pine forest--almost 200 miles of nothing but tree farms.

About midway we stopped at the Visitor Center in Grande Cache for our lunch break.  Grande Cache is a small town of only about 4,000, and it’s young, too.  It was only established in 1969 when a coal company started mining coal in the area.  A few years later a forest products company also moved to town.

Grande Cache got its name from the fur trappers who used the area as a stop over waiting for transportation to trading posts.  The trappers built wooden storage buildings on stilts called caches to store their furs while they waited.

With the exception of the coal mining facility, all we saw were trees.

We arrived in Grande Prairie about mid afternoon and found ourselves a cozy little spot in the Walmart parking lot.

Grande Prairie is a much larger town than either Hinton or Grande Cache with a population of about 50,000.  It’s the largest city between Edmonton and Fairbanks.  Along with some oil and natural gas stuff, the big industry is Proctor & Gamble’s pulp mill.

At the intersection of highways 40 and 43 in Grande Prairie, we saw our first road sign to Alaska.  Generally speaking, when your destination appears on the road signs, you’re getting close.  I wouldn’t call it very close with still about 1200 miles to go before we cross the Alaska border.  But when you think about how far we’ve come, 3600 miles from Nashville, I guess we are getting close, relatively speaking.

We’re planning to leave here early in the morning and stop for a couple hours in Dawson Creek to visit the museum and make pictures at the Alaska Highway Mile 0 marker.  We won’t spend the night, however, but will head on over to Fort St. John.

CRITTER COUNT:  6 mule deer.

That’s it for today.  Thanks for tagging along.

Domestic Day in Hinton, Alberta

Whew, I’m glad this day is over.  I guess we didn’t realize just how much we had to do today.  One of my primary goals was to get on the internet to do my own blog posting, catch up on the blogs I read, take care of email, and do some research on upcoming points of interest.

We walked over to McDonalds for our breakfast this morning with my computer in hand.   I was hoping they had WiFi and they did.  While I sipped coffee and ate my egg mcmuffin, I got my backlog of stories and photos posted for the past three days.  It’s a good thing we decided to go to McDonalds because the internet I was counting on at the KOA is less than optimal.  Not only is it slow, but we can’t get it at our site.  After dinner I went up and sat in the laundry room to check email and research the next few towns along the way.  I never got as far as catching up on the blogs I read.  I feel like I’m out of the loop with what’s happening with my friends.

After breakfast, Gene set about the business of replacing the windshield wipers on the motor home.  It sounded like an easy task, but it turned into some monstrous project.  He walked over to Canadian Tire.  Canadian Tire is like a giant Ace Hardware with auto supplies.  The salesman helped him select wipers that would fit the truck.  Gene worked and worked to get the new wipers installed without any luck.  He finally drove down the street a couple blocks to the Ford dealership.  The service tech couldn’t get them installed either, and finally determined that they just wouldn’t fit.  The service department was actually closed and the guy helping Gene was really off, but he spent several minutes trying to help.  Since the service department was closed, he wasn’t able to just grab a wiper set from stock.  However, he called across the street to the NAPA store and then walked across with Gene to get wipers from them.  When we finally had wipers that fit, they went on in a snap.  Gene made another trip to Canadian Tire to return the original wipers.  That 5 minute job took about an hour.

Gene’s next project for today was to fix the hot water tank.  After talking with a service tech at an RV dealership in Grande Prairie, he was convinced it was a fuse.  He removed the fuse that was in the water heater.  It’s one of those tiny 2 amp auto fuses.  Another trip to Canadian Tire and he was soon home with a box of tiny fuses.  It turned out that the box of tiny fuses were not as tiny as they should have been to fit our water heater.  Back to Canadian Tire for a box of mini fuses.  With the new fuse installed, the water heater still doesn’t work.  Gene has decided he has done all he knows how to do and will take it to a dealership somewhere next week.

That was our morning from the Walmart parking lot.  After that we moved to the KOA.

This is a nice park.  The sites are long and level and the grass between sites is lush and green.  The bathrooms, showers, and laundry are all immaculately clean.  We got showers, did laundry, and all the other usual housekeeping chores.  The only complaint we have about the park is the WiFi.  It’s a little pricey, but we think all KOAs are.  They did give us the 10 percent discount even though our membership has expired.  That made the price for the night a little more reasonable, but still right at $40.

We have neighbors tonight from Texas who are also on their way to Alaska.  While I was  on the internet in the laundry room, Gene was having a glass of wine with them.  I’m sure we’ll see them again along the way.

Many who travel to Alaska use The Milepost as their highway guide.  The Milepost is very similar to the interstate exit guides in that it lists the services all along the road.  But The Milepost is much more detailed than the exit guides.  It lists almost every thing along the highway--every pull-out, every view point, every sign post.  It’s a great resource for a trip like this, but you have to read carefully.  The Milepost also sells advertisement space.  An entry for a campground, for example, may be written by the campground owner and not an impartial editor of the Milepost.  Still, we like it and it’s just full of all kinds of information and historical tidbits.

This weekend is Canada’s May 3-day holiday weekend.  They’re celebrating Victoria Day on Monday.  Officially, it is the celebration of Queen Victoria’s birthday, but, like in the USA, it unofficially opens the summer season.  There’ll be parades and fireworks, but mostly folks are out enjoying the long weekend.  Our campground is almost full with young families out for a little fun in the sun.

GAS REPORT:  We filled up this morning at the Husky station.  We paid $5.00 US.  (I haven’t checked the exchange rate this week, so this is based on the 4 percent of last week.)  Diesel was $4.33 per gallon.

Tomorrow, it’s off to Grande Prairie for one night, then on to Dawson Creek on Monday.  Dawson Creek is the start of the Alaska Highway.

I think I’ve just about covered it for today.  Thanks for tagging along.

Icefields Parkway

We got an early start this morning.  It was near freezing overnight and not much better this morning, so we were ready to get to someplace warmer.

This morning was the first time we have used the Protect-a-Tow.  It was very easy to attach.  In fact, I did it while Gene was getting the Break Buddy attached.

About 35 miles into our trip, we made our first stop at the Icefield Centre.  The Centre has displays and interpretative panels which explain how glaciers are formed and their progression over time.

Across the street is the Athabasca Glacier which is just one tiny arm extending down from the 241 square mile Columbia Icefield.  The ice in the Icefield is 30 stories deep.  Meltwater from the Columbia Icefield flows in three directions--west to the Pacific Ocean, north to the Arctic Ocean, and east to Hudson Bay.

There is, of course, a gift shop, as well as a small restaurant and even a hotel at the Centre.  For those adventurous types, for a fee, you can take a ride onto the glacier in a snocoach then get out and walk around.  We kept our feet firmly on the dry pavement.

At Sunwapta Pass we left Banff National Park and entered Jasper National Park.  We didn’t make any other stops in Jasper other than at a pull-out for our lunch break.  We’ll be back to this park on our trip home.

Just before we got to the town of Jasper, we turned east onto Highway 16 toward Hinton, our destination for tonight.  We are at the local Walmart, but will move to the KOA down the street tomorrow.

We need some time to get the hot water heater fixed and discover where the shower is leaking, and we both need some internet time.  KOA is the full-service campground we need, but they also have the price to go with those services.  At almost $50 per night we didn’t want to waste even one minute of that time.  Since we had a long drive today and also needed to do some grocery shopping we decided to stay at Walmart tonight.  We’ll go over to KOA in the morning at the stroke of 11 o’clock--the earliest check-in time.

We were anxious to get out of the cold and we found our warmer temperatures as soon as we came down out of the high mountains.  Even though it’s cloudy here in Hinton, temperatures are in the low 70s and we have our windows open for the fresh air.

So, that’s where we are as of today and will move on up to Grande Prairie on Sunday.  Monday we’ll be at Dawson Creek and the start of the Alaska Highway.

CRITTER COUNT:  We saw 3 deer and 3 elk which are so common here I don’t even take pictures.  Our special treat today was a large black bear grazing right by the road and 4 mountain goats way up on the mountainside.  Leaving Jasper we saw 4 big horn sheep.

That’s it for now.  Thanks for tagging along.

Yoho National Park

Boy, did the weatherman get the forecast wrong for today.  Either that or we misread the forecast posted at the Visitor Center.  I was all set for another day of sunshine.  What we woke up to was a cold rain and it has been dreary all day.

This was our day to investigate Yoho National Park so we went there right after a quick stop in Lake Louise Village to buy bread, make a couple phone calls, and check the weather forecast.

Yoho National Park is celebrating its 125th birthday this year.  Yoho is a Cree word meaning “awe”.  It’s awesome features are high mountains (28 peaks over 9,000 feet) and spectacular water falls--or so they say.  The cloud cover was so low today we couldn’t see the high peaks and the roads and/or trails to the waterfalls are still closed for the season.

All is well though, because we saw one very interesting railroad track and one beautiful lake and short but mighty waterfall.

Our first stop after entering Yoho was at the spiral tunnels.  When the railroad was built, a very steep grade was required to get over this particular section of the mountain.  (4.3 percent grade--the steepest of any in North America).  That was really unsatisfactory so a plan was devised to reduce that grade.  What they came up with were the spiral tunnels.

They are really just a series of four switchbacks, but since a trail can’t maneuver as easily as a walker or evan a car, a loop was developed so the train could make the turn.  That loop is cut deep into the side of the mountain as a tunnel.  While we were stopped at the view point reading the interpretative panels a train came.  We watched as the train ascended the mountain to the first tunnel and then in a few seconds came out the other end of the tunnel going in what appeared to be the opposite direction.  Amazing!  Or should I say, “awesome”.

Our second stop was at the Information Center in the tiny village of Field, BC.  This Information Center is brand new, in fact, they were still working on it today.  We’ve noticed a lot of new stuff in all the parks this week.   We are assuming this face lift is in preparation for the birthday celebrations this summer.  Not only is Yoho 125 years old, but the Canadian Park Service is celebrating its 100th birthday.  What ever the reason, things are looking real good in the Canadian mountain parks.

Our next stop was at Emerald Lake.  The lake is still frozen, but the ice is breaking up so we could see the brilliant emerald color.  There was an avalanche this winter which took out all the trees in its path on the side of the mountain and dumped them right into the lake.  It looks like the trees were just mowed down.  Incredible what force the snow can have.

Along the road which leads to Emerald Lake is another powerful force at work--water.  Over time the Kicking Horse River has eroded away the rock to create an archway over the river.  Come back in a few thousand years and you won’t recognize the place.

That was our visit to Yoho.  Tomorrow we’re heading up the Icefield Parkway, probably in the rain.  Jasper National Park is located at the norther end of Banff, and we’ll actually drive through the southern end of Jasper, but we’ll wait to do our sightseeing there on our way home from Alaska.

CRITTER COUNT:  9 elk

That’s it for this rainy day.  Thanks for tagging along.

Banff National Park

Today we went out for a little drive in Banff National Park.  Banff is Canada’s first national park established in 1885.  From just southeast of the town of Banff to Lake Louise, the major road through the park is TransCanada 1.  It’s like our interstates--a limited access, 4-lane divided highway.

This section of TransCanada 1 is newly constructed and is a fine piece of highway workmanship.  Because it is within Banff National Park, wildlife is a major consideration for motorists.  A tall fence has been erected on both sides of the highway to keep critters from wandering onto the road and at regular intervals, overpasses have been built and planted with grass and trees to allow wildlife to move from one side of the highway to the other without endangering themselves or motorists.

Wildlife crossing bridge

Just past Lake Louise, TransCanada 1 veers off to the west through Yoho National Park and Highway 93 (Icefields Parkway) continues north to Jasper National Park.  Except for a few short side roads to campgrounds, picnic areas, and trailheads, there are no other roads in Banff National Park.  That is except for Bow Valley Parkway.

Bow Valley Parkway runs roughly parallel to TransCanada 1 from the town of Banff to Lake Louise.  For those of you familiar with the Smokies, Bow Valley Parkway is the equivalent of Cade’s Cove Road.  It is the best place to see wildlife.

We drove this 30-mile stretch of road today in the hopes of seeing some of the parks big wildlife.  We stopped at every pull-out and view point.  We got some fantastic views, but we only saw a ground squirrel in the way of wildlife.

We walked around the town of Banff for a while this afternoon.  It’s a tourist town for sure, but much more upscale than most.  We were in search of WiFi and learned it was available in several of the coffee shops, McDonalds, the food court at the mall, and, of course, at the library.

We came back to our campground by way of TransCanada 1.  That’s where we finally saw the wildlife for today--2 deer and a lone elk.

We moved to a different campground this morning.  We are now parked with 9 other Class Cs (all rentals) and 2 pick-up truck campers (also rentals) at Mosquito Creek campground.  They say this campground is open, but it’s all snowed in.  A very large parking area at the entrance has been grated and we’re all parked around the parameter of that area.  Mosquito Creek is flowing just over the snowbank at the edge of the campground and we are surrounded by tall sandstone monoliths whose walls seem to jut straight up from the earth.  This “campground” might not be much at this time of year, but the scenic factor is off the chart.

Tomorrow, we’re going to drive over to Yoho National Park to see what it has to offer, but we will do that as a day trip.  We are not moving camps tomorrow.  We’ll be here for another night before moving up to Hinton.

GAS REPORT:  As we expected, Alberta has cheaper fuel prices--not much, but a little and every little bit helps.  At the Husky station in Lake Louise Village we paid $5.41 US dollars per gallon.  Diesel was going for $5.08 US dollars per gallon

The photos today were all taken along Bow Valley Parkway with a couple thrown in of our campground.

That’s all for today.  Thanks for tagging along.

Lake Louise

This was moving day again.  We move often, but we’re only going very short distances.  We haven’t had a 200 mile day in over two weeks.  Today’s drive from Radium, through Kootenay National Park, and then north a short distance to Lake Louise Village was just 85 miles.

Where we were at Dry Gulch, we had rain overnight, but in the high elevations in Kootenay a fresh snow had fallen.  The drive through the mountains was just beautiful.  Of course, some of you have had so much snow this past winter, you really don’t care if you ever see another snowflake.  I was thrilled at the beauty of it all.

Down in the valley at Kootenay, we saw our first moose of the season.  That was exciting.

After crossing the Continental Divide at Vermilion Pass we left Kootenay behind and entered Banff National Park.  We turned north for a short distance to Lake Louise Village.

This small village is inside the National Park and consists of an Information Center, several shops, boutiques, and galleries, a post office, small grocery, a few restaurants, and a couple gas stations.  I’m not sure there are any permanent residents, but there are plenty of townhouses, condos, and such like for rent to tourists.  There is also a large Campground/RV Park.

We are staying at the RV Park.  The campground, which is still closed for the season, is for tenters only.  The RV Park is for RVers only.  There are three loops in the RV Park, but only one is open.  Most interior roads are paved as well as all the sites.  I think they may all be pull-thrus; it’s hard to tell since there is still so much snow around.  Each site is wide enough for two RVs with electrical posts and picnic tables in a grassy area between the next two sites.  It’s a strange setup and if you want your picnic table on the passenger side, you have to run your electric cord under your RV to connect to the post.
Since our picnic table was mostly covered in snow, we just parked with our electric post on the driver’s side.  The sites only have electricity.  Water is available as well as a dump station.

When we arrived about 11 AM, the RV Park was almost empty.  However, there has been a steady stream of new arrivals all afternoon and evening, and now there is no more room in the inn.  The most amazing thing is they are all Class Cs.  I don’t know how many sites are in this loop--perhaps a hundred.  There are only three 5th wheels and maybe ten Class Bs.  The rest are Cs.  There are not this many at the dealership.  Not only are they all Class Cs--they’re all rentals.  We have the only car in the whole park.

There is a class B parked next to us--a 30 something couple from Australia.  They seem very nice.

We got a knock on our door late afternoon.  It was a couple from Nashville on their way to Alaska in their rented class C which they picked up in Idaho.  They saw our Davidson County plates and just wanted to say, “hi”.

After we got settled, we drove up the hill to Lake Louise.  Lake Louise is named for Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the sixth child of Queen Victoria.  The beauty of the lake and its setting in the towering peaks of the Rockies has drawn the tourist crowd for decades.  Once the railroad was completed and able to transport the rich and famous, they have come in droves.  From a humble cabin to the magnificent Chateau Lake Louise, visitors have found a place to rest at the edge of this beautiful lake for over a hundred years.

Today, the lake is still frozen, so we missed its brilliant emerald color.  With the overcast skies, the fog on the mountains, and the snow on the lake it was kind of hard to tell where one began and another ended.

Our plan, as of tonight, is to tour the village of Banff tomorrow, then visit Yoho National Park on Thursday.  We are paying a high price ($32 Canadian) for our electric only site, so we will probably move up the road a little bit to a no hookup campground for half the price tomorrow morning and stay there for 2 nights.  Friday, we’ll drive up the Icefields Parkway to Hinton where we’ll probably stay for the weekend.

We are having a few issues with the motor home.  The leak in the shower has not been resolved.  We were looking forward to getting to this campground so we could take on a full tank of fresh water and have a place to dump what we discarded.  That would give us a good opportunity to discover where the leak was coming from.

We got here, filled up the holding tank, turned on the hot water heater and the water didn’t get hot.  Gene got out the owner’s manual and studied for a while.  He also called an RV dealer in Hinton.  Whomever he spoke with suggested it was probably a fuse.  He found the fuse on the water heater, but after rummaging through his little box of fuses could not find one that was the same size.  I guess we’ll just have to wait on these repairs until we get to Hinton.

CRITTER COUNT:  1 moose and 30 deer.

So, that’s what happened today.  Thanks for tagging along.