Sunday, June 27, 2010

Jasper National Park 6/27

Today we finished the trip to Calgary.  We drove through Jasper and Banff National Parks.  The drive was one of the best yet.  It leaves you wondering how to compare beauty to beauty.  We have seen several different ecosystems and environments, more mountains than we will ever be able to count, and I can't even try to rate them.  All I know is that they are all beautiful, and today's drive is up there with the best!

We climbed to the mountain tops and saw glacier after glacier.  We went from big trees to stunted trees to big trees and then to beautiful hilly range land.  We saw lots of wildlife warning signs, but with all the traffic, any wild animal would be crazy to be near the road!  Even so, we saw one moose running along the road.  It was truly amazing!

Tonight, we are camped in an RV park outside of Calgary, near the airport so that I can fly home for a few days tomorrow and because we had a mountain, not comparable to the others we have seen except in size, of laundry to get done.  This park is actually a little depressing.  It is primarily full of people living here full time.  There are multitudes of small trailers housing entire families including 2 to 5 children each.  It brings to mind the term "Hooverville" only I think that more recent US politics are to blame.  (Yes Bush, I am thinking of you!)  The signs in the park and the laundry room paint a picture of trying to keep peace among a dense population of down and outers.  Everyone is polite and trying to cope as best as possible, but I really hate to see children caught up in the trap of poverty.

I am tired so I will let the pictures tell the story tonight!

Canadian target!




Calgary

Tomorrow, I will travel to Amie's to spend a few days with her family.  Mike will continue our trip to Kalispell and I will meet him there in a week or so and then we will continue on with our fantastic adventure.  There are many more turns to make!

Highway 37/ June 25



This poor guy looked like he had been out a little to long the night before.  First he was grimacing, then he had his eyes closed, and then he succombed.   We waited for about twenty minutes, and he still had to do this all day long.








Highway 37 was another eye candy experience. We traveled the entire 500 miles in one day, and at no time was there not beautiful mountains and scenery to awe over. We started in the shorter spruce forests, and moved into mixed pine, fir, hemlock and aspen. And we saw animals! Lots of bears crossed our paths including one HUGE grizzly that did not look soft and cuddly. In fact, he looked quite fearsome and I was very grateful that I had metal all around me, a big engine and a horn, even though it is a wimpy horn. I was completely flabbergasted at how fast such a large animal can disappear in the underbrush.

The entire road was littered along the edges with bear scat. I can only speculate as to why the side of the road. Do the bears think that the road is a long latrine? Or is this a statement about their opinion of the road and its users? Maybe it is a game; see who can run out of the woods, deposit their scat and run back in the woods without being seen? Or, though a somewhat scary thought, maybe there are so many bears that the woods, roads, and everything else are equally covered in scat!

Out in the middle of nowhere, we passed a jade store. When we were in China, there was lots of carved jade in the markets. I very carefully carried some carved horses back on the airplane. But now, I know that British Columbia, in the area we were in, produces 90% of the world’s jade. We stopped to satisfy our curiosity and saw piles and piles of raw jade. If I were walking in the woods and came across a jade boulder, it would never cross my mind that it was a valuable stone. It really looks very plain before cutting and polishing. Those who know me well, and those who read between the lines of this blog, know that I have a thing for moose. I have one in my car and several in my house. Of course there was a very nice jade moose with antlers made out of gold – I loved it! Until I saw the price, $1195. This picture is all I will take from the store.



In 500 miles, we passed a total of 4 communities. All appeared to be First Nation communities. Two had approximately 50 people and the other two were really only a store and gas station combination. (At one of these we paid $1.69 a liter for gas which is about $6.26 a gallon.) They were quite far apart and isolated. I can only guess at what life in these communities would be like. We also began keeping track of the names of streams that we crossed. Now, the soapbox part. We passed 47 streams and only three had names that could have been named by indigenous people. Maybe ten white people live in that area. What happened to all of the original names of the streams. And it’s not like we creatively named the streams. We have such classics as 1st North Fork, 2nd North Fork, 3rd North Fork, Dry Creek (which wasn’t) Hotel Creek, Black Creek, Blue Creek, Spruce Creek etc. I do wonder how Baking Soda Creek got its name. There must be a story there! We also had a spirited debate about whether streams, creeks or brooks are bigger.

We reached Highway 16, heading towards Prince George. We couldn’t find a place to camp until we arrived in Smithers, BC which is another 60 miles down the road. We are exhausted and ready for bed AND it got dark about 11:30. It was the first darkness we have seen in three weeks!


Friday, June 25, 2010

June 23rd

No glacial view!Approaching a storm.



No mountains for sheep to lick! We woke up to rain and more rain. We have been so lucky with weather, that I understand that it was our turn for rain. But we were also traveling through beautiful mountains that were completely invisible. No glaciers, no snow covered peaks, just wet stunted trees, bushes and road. Even the animals were hiding out. I tried to find bright spots and have to admit, there are many pretty flowers along the road. And I saw lots of beaver dams and lodges and a few swans in ponds.

I also had the luxury of getting up, and sitting in the passenger seat in my bathrobe and slippers drinking coffee while Mike drove. He was up before me (always) and had packed everything up, prepared my coffee and a roll for me. Later we stopped for me to shower and dress.

We took the Al-Can highway back rather than taking the Top of the World Highway as we had before. This was supposed to be a better road, but it is the worst road we have traveled so far! We went through thirty to forty miles of construction where the road was dirt. Signs warned us that the roadway would be “extremely dusty”. I beg to differ. Clay roads, covered with rain make mud, mud, mud. And not one speck of dust. At one point, when I was driving, we skidded at least 20 feet, in the correct direction, but completely out of control. My heart is too old for such terror! The stairs to the motor home were covered in three inches of mud by the end of the day, and of course the motor home and the bicycles behind are all encrusted with the stuff. We were sure that when we got to the border the roads would improve. First, nothing changed at the border and the customs station is twenty kilometers past the border. Second, the roads then changed to some of the biggest frost heaves we have ever seen. You could lose one of those sky scrapers in them! At one point, I watched while our front right tire rose two feet on a heave and the left tire sunk one foot in a dip and I glanced to the side of the road, where in Yukon fashion, someone had written “OVR” in rocks. Were they telling me we were done or was this their initials? I don’t know the answer to that question, but it was sure appropriately placed!



I was driving as we crossed the border. I handed the customs officer our passports, dog papers, insurance information and waited for further instruction. She asked me if we had any guns. I said “no”. She asked me if we had any “pistols”. I said “no”. She asked me if we had any weapons. Again, I said “no”. Then she asked me if I had anything that could be used as a weapon. Well of course we do! Axes, knives, purses, shoes, my tongue, you name it – we have lots of such items. I said, “we have butter knives”. If looks could kill, I would be a squished rat. But she did tell us to go on. And Mike told me how incredibly stupid that was.

We stopped at a remote commercial campground for the night. Mike looked under the motor home and found that one of the straps that hold the gas tank in place had moved a couple of inches and repaired it, but other than that we seemed to have survived without major damage. This was the first campground that has had a communal fire pit and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Everybody was talking about their driving experiences and the condition of their rigs. The owner joined us and said that the road had been repaved the year before, but that the way the ground melts under the road changes the road constantly. He claimed that you could pound a post into the road and spray paint a line going out from the post and return to it a week later and the line and post would be a foot apart. The people going north were disappointed to find that the road continued in bad repair. The people going south (us) didn’t feel any better. The owner also had two very cute dogs (1/2 Shihtsu and ½ Brichon) that played with Bernie. At one point Bernie marked a bush and the two dogs ran over, and with their heads together lifted their legs to mark the same spot in perfect mirror image. I wish I had my camera ready! One couple at the fire had planned on staying at a public campground near there and were disappointed to find a sign that said, “no tenting” and another that indicated the place was closed. The owner relayed that “they” (whoever they are) shot a grizzly there today and that was why the place was closed. He then went on to say that we tourists feed the bears and leave. And that we don’t see the damage we do when the bears have to be shot to protect the public. While I agree with him, I am uncomfortable being grouped with the bear feeders. And I also have to admit that if I am fishing and a bear wants my fish, I will feed the bear! The owner, who was born and raised in the Yukon, told the Texans at the fire that when he visited there he was flabbergasted to see all the stuffed and mounted animal heads on the walls. He said that when he needed meat, he went hunting but that he never thought about hanging the heads on his walls. (I did not ask him about the stuffed moose, bear and elk I have seen in many gift stores). We went to bed dreaming of smooth roads and clear skies.



Stowawaymuddy roadreally, the road was that bad!The sky is getting lightermuddy steps