Sunday, September 1, 2013 - Plain City, UT to Eagle, ID (316 miles) - James repaired the lights on the trailer and we visited with Grandma and Granddad for a little bit before the drive to Eagle. James said we got the best gas mileage of the trip from Utah to Idaho. Lincoln was soooo glad to get out of the car and play. Thank you GandG for letting us stay over, use your tools, eat your food and then get on the road. Love you lots!
The caravan - Lincoln and Mommy in the white Subaru and Daddy in the white truck - don't you love the back 'window' of the camp shell? Aspen, Emma and Oma designed and painted that masterpiece! As soon as we got to Eagle, we put everybody to work completely unloading the Subaru, the trailer and part of the back of the truck. Major repacking to be done on Labor Day!
Monday September 2, 2013 - Labor Day! - Eagle, ID to Hermiston, OR (245 miles) - It took us all day to sort through our stuff and repack the trailer and the truck. The Subaru and Lincoln weren't going on the rest of the road trip. We hope to sell the subaru very soon and Lincoln gets to play with his cousins for a week. Then Oma and Linc will fly up to Alaska together.
After dinner we said our goodbyes - left Lincoln with Oma and Opa and all his fun cousins and drove to Hermiston. Only about a 4 hour drive, but at least we made progress! Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who played with and cared for Linc while we were apart. Thank you for celebrating his 2nd birthday. Thank you Uncle Mike and Aunt Janeal for letting us stay over and for feeding us.
Tuesday September 3, 2013 - Hermiston, OR to Portland, OR (208 miles) - first stop was at my cousins' Mike and Megan Cline to see Camden. Just 3 days old. They only live a few minutes away from Uncle Mike and Aunt Janeal.
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While we were in Hermiston, we visited with a nice couple outside a grocery store. They'd actually been to Cordova. The old man came back, after saying goodbye, to give us this wooden cross and their best wishes for our safe adventures.
Next stop was in The Dalles, OR to visit James' Grandma Bonnell. We had a nice visit and tried to go for a walk, but it was too windy out doors and fairly limited indoors. (Update: so glad we made the effort to visit with Grandma. She passed away November 13, 2013.) Our last stop of the day was near Portland - we stayed with Roger and Kathleen Wilding. Thanks Wildings! Thank you for a place to sleep, food, and the generosity of getting safely through Canada without worrying.
Wednesday September 4, 2013 - Portland, OR to Sumas, WA (294 miles) - More friends, more family! We visited James' mission companion (Chris Siegrist) and his family in Longview, WA. They have twin girls just younger than Lincoln and it made me miss my little man to watch them play. Later, we stopped in Auburn, WA to say hello to my cousin's family - Marylyn and kids were home and it was fun to see their place and hear about the kids' first day of school. We got trailer weatherproofed (thanks Wildings for the plastic - and thanks Mom for the idea on securing the bike, it worked perfectly!). We drove all the way to the US/Canada border and camped in Sumas.
Thursday September 5, 2013 - Sumas, WA to Tudyah Lake Provincial Park, BC (538 miles). I'm sure I took pictures this day. Mostly of signs of the small towns we passed through in Canada. Our border crossing was uneventful. They ran background checks because it was my first trip into Canada, but they didn't search the truck or trailer. Thank goodness, I can't imagine repacking again. This day of driving reminded me of driving from Cascade back to Eagle. Beautiful mountains and trees and rivers (except BIGGER) and then gradually into foothills and sage brush. We ate dinner at Boston Pizza in Quesnel and we almost tipped the waitress in American dollars. But then I thought, what if someone in southern Washington got a tip in Canadian dollars? So we added the tip onto the debit card receipt instead. We camped in a campground and tried to get a good start on the next morning to start putting in some kilometers.
Friday September 6, 2013 - Tudyah Lake, BC to Strawberry Flats Campground near Muncho Lake, BC (591 miles). This day was fun! We drove through Chetwynd and saw some incredible log sculptures. Chetwynd hosts the International Chainsaw Carving Championship and the carvings are all around town.
We stopped in Dawson Creek so that I could start the Alaska Highway at Mile 0. I've already been to the end of the highway in Delta Junction (mile 1420). Just outside Dawson Creek, we took a stretch of "old" Alaska Highway. Some sections of the highway have been redone in order to straighten out the road. And we saw our first bear of the trip.
In American dollars and in Canadian dollars, it took over $100 to fill up the tanks. I never did the math to compare gallons and litres. We camped at a closed campground near Muncho lake which is less than an hour away from Liard River Hot Springs!! The hot springs was the only "MUST DO" stop on my wish list for the trip.
Saturday September 7, 2013 - Strawberry Flats, BC to kilometer 1489, YT (near Kusawa Lake) (461 miles). Our first stop was an morning swim at Liard River Hot Springs. There are several pools. The rocks behind me (lookers right) are where the super-hot water comes into this pool. It took several tries, but eventually I added my own rock to the pile. It was super-super-super hot! The other pool was closed (bear in the area), so we'll have to go again sometime! It is a partly-unimproved hot springs, there are changing areas and restrooms and stairs down to the water, but the pools are not paved or enclosed.
Wood bison - apparently a cousin of the plains bison that I'm familiar with from Yellowstone. There were a lot of bison along this stretch of highway and the weather is beautiful! Definitely fall in Canada.
Watson Lake - this is one of the first towns we came to in Yukon Territory. The pink sign explains how, in 1942 as they were building the Alaska Highway, the US Army Corps of Engineers erected sign posts at major points with directions and distances around the area. At Watson Lake, a homesick soldier added his hometown sign to the Army's post and started a local tradition. At the end of 2004, there are more than 55,000 signs surrounding the original sign post in a sign-post forest. It would be easy to spend all day wandering through and seeing the variety of signs and all the different places.
I found a Nampa, Idaho sign!
Yukon Territory has the neatest "Watch for Moose" signs - and why I am still surprised to see mileage and speed in kilometers?
This little float plane is just off Schwatka Lake near Whitehorse. When he spotted it, James exclaimed, "It's so cute!" He'd never seen one in person before. So I had to take his picture with the plane - he's so cute when he gets excited about planes.
Sunday September 8, 2013 - km 1489, YT to Squirrel Creek State Recreational Site nearish Glennallen, AK (538 miles). When we got tired of driving on Saturday night, we found a turn off and set up camp on the road. In the morning, we could see that it had been paved and you could still see the paint striping. It was a section of old Alaska Highway that had been replaced by new highway. So we literally camped on a stretch of the old Alaska Highway.
Another pretty fall day, some rain sprinkles, in Canada.
ALASKA!!! The last town in Canada is Beaver Creek. The Canadian customs (for going INTO Canada) is a few kilometers just past that - apparently they moved the building out of town because people would forget to stop at customs and lights&sirens would be wailing through town at all hours chasing forgetful tourists. Then you get to the International Border which has signs and turn outs, but no official border crossing. Then a couple miles later, you get to the American customs (for going INTO Alaska). There is a sign stating that the border between American and Canada is the longest undefended international border.
Monday September 9, 2013 - Happy 2nd Birthday Lincoln! - Squirrel Creek, AK to Cordova, AK - HOME! (85 road miles + 74 ferry miles (just a bit less than 3 hours on the ferry)) We had a wet night of camping at Squirrel Creek - a campground where James has many memories. We stopped at Worthington Glacier - 30 miles N of Valdez in the Thompson Pass area. It was named (according to AlaskaGeographic.org) in 1899 after a survey man who survived being swept away in a glacial stream.
This informational sign about ice worms was at the Worthington Glacier stop. I love how it quoted Robert W Service's Ballad of the Ice-Worm Cocktail...
"Their bellies were a bilious blue, their eyes a bulbous red;
Their back were grey, and gross were they, and hideous of head.
And when with gusto and a fork the barman speared one out,
It must have gone four inches from its tail-tip to it's snout."
Then we hurried to rainy Valdez, bought ferry tickets (THANK YOU again to
Roger and Kathleen Wilding - they loaned us some money back in Portland
to make sure we didn't get stuck in Canada for lack of gas money and we
used the last of it to buy our ferry tickets) and found a place that
served a hot breakfast.
Here's the truck and trailer down on the vehicle deck. You're not allowed to be in your vehicle during the trip, so take anything you might need with you to the passenger deck.
We hit 'turbulance' / rough waters along the route. James took a nap, but it seemed like riding a huge raft (with really cushy seats) through some great roller coaster rapids to me.
Seems like our route took a lot longer than James' drive in July. But according to MapQuest, our routes were only about 40 miles different. A good portion of the drive (between Prince George, BC and Glennallen, AK) was the exact same. This was our route from Salt Lake to Cordova.
D: Hermiston, OR E: The Dalles, OR F: Portland, OR
G: Longview, WA H: Auburn, WA I: Sumas, WA
J: Tudyah Lake, BC K: Chetwynd, BC L: Dawson Creek, BC
M: Strawberry Flats N: Liard Hot Springs O: Watson Lake, YT
P: Whitehorse, YT Q: km 1489, YT R: Tok, AK
S: Squirrel Creek, AK T: Worthington Glacier U: Valdez, AK
V: CORDOVA, AK