Day 17 - The final Day

Day 17 Sunday – Home At Last
Ate a quick breakfast along side the road and headed for home, took over an hour to get through the Canadian border, they only had one lane opened and finally opened another, probably the longest we had to wait to cross the Canadian US border. We pretty much boogied home from there as by this time we were all ready to be home. The weather was hot, something we were not use to - 97 degrees - and we got home just in time to enjoy it.

You can't really tell from this picture but when I stepped out in the morning it was rather God-like with sun shinning and all of the statues that were around us.

The truck is really due for a bath. You would not believe all the bugs we brought home with us. Sparky and Jasper were very happy to see us back.

Day 16 Jasper & Banff

Day 16 Saturday – CRAZY DAY Drove over 850 miles – poor planning on our part – Did not know it was Canada Day – there was not a single campsite in all of Canada to be found. Luckily we woke up early this day and were on the road by 7:00, reason being – we wanted to spend some quality time in Jasper or Banff, either fishing, hiking or kayaking, we got to the park entrance on the Jasper end and went to pay for the visit and found out there was no camping available except for a field of overflow camping, we decided that did not sound like much fun so we thought we would just drive thru it and find a spot once we got out of the park. No such luck, entered the park around 5:00 pm – left the park around 10:30 – only making a brief stop to visit some falls, and for a quick bologna sandwich. Once we got out of the park it was dark, very dark, we hadn’t experienced the darkness like that since we arrived in Sitka – driving was scary, lots of critter on the road, couldn’t find a place to camp – I wanted to stay in a motel, Matt ended up parking us in the parking lot to the visitors center in I can’t remember where – this was just after midnight. In the morning we awoke to find we were parked next to a church with all of God’s Angels watching over us. Pretty crazy it was. We were only less then 5 hours from home though.

Aaron's self portrait - again - had to take the camera away from him several times on the whole journey as I was worried about a dead battery - there are numerous "Self Portraits" of Aaron. The kids (forgot, I get corrected now when I call them that) were really awesome on the whole trip.

A picture of some lake I tried to get Matt to stop at so I could take a better picture but as you have probably noticed most of my pictures are from the cab of the truck. I was really impressed with the color of the water and how good the reflection was coming off the lake.

Mountains in Banff

I thought this was rather humorous - Banff on one side and Jasper on the other.

Athabasca Falls, one of the two stops we got to make in all of Jasper and Banff. Drive, Drive, Drive, was sort of like the Chevy Chase movie when the saw the Grand Canyon.

Day 15

Day 15 Friday The Alaskan Highway
On the road by 8:30!! Saw lots and lots of critters today. Stopped at Liard Hot Springs – Way to hot – Upper springs was 126 degrees and lower was not much cooler. Was a nice stop though to help break up the day. Destination Fort Nelson. Had to travel extra miles today to make up for yesterday. What a beautiful drive it was – great scenery and lots of wild life. Stayed at an RV park in Fort Nelson – no messing around – just eat and sleep.

Liard Hot Springs

Views along they way on Alaskan Highway Day 15

I must say this was one of my favorite drives of the whole 4800 miles of the journey - we saw a lot of wildlife and the scenery was spectacular. This was between Johnson's crossing just outside of Whitehorse and Fort Nelson.

The Wild Life

An Elk, one of the latter critters to be seen.

Mountain Sheep.

A moose.

Cariboo

Bison

No Explanation needed

Wild Amarican Geese crossing the border

Hence the sign

A black bear

A strange sort of cow like creature.

Black bear and cub, Aaron said I could have had a really good picture if I jumped out of the truck and stood between mama and cub and took picture, I didn't fall for it.

Wild horses, they had no shoes.

Watson Lake

Day 15

On the road by 8:30!! Saw lots and lots of critters today. Stopped at Liard Hot Springs – Way too hot – Upper springs was 126 degrees and lower was not much cooler. Was a nice stop though to help break up the day. Destination Fort Nelson. Had to travel extra miles today to make up for yesterday. What a beautiful drive it was – great scenery and lots of wild life. Stayed at an RV park in Fort Nelson – no messing around – just eat and sleep.


Look Newport WA - Duh we did not even think to bring a sign, they now have over 60,000 signs here, this was started by a homesick soldier during the construction of the highway.