Friday, July 31, 2015
We are in Hinton, Alberta, Canada.
We left Charlie Lake, BC, after saying goodbye to
Obi. Our first stop was the Kiskatinaw
Bridge, which was built during the original construction of the Alaska
Highway. It was one of many engineering
feats during construction. It’s a curved
timber bridge. I think it’s the only
original bridge still in use. It’s no
longer on the Alaska Highway, which by passes it, but is used by local traffic.
Dawson Creek, BC, the start of the Alaska Highway, was
our next stop. (We managed to do the
highway backwards of course.)
They have a nice sculpture of a surveyor on the actual
mile zero spot.
We’ve purchased one of the videos that documents the
building of the highway, but there are several available. They are well worth watching if you can find
one on Netflix or Amazon. They planned
and built the highway through the wilderness in 8 months under horrific
conditions in a climate they didn’t understand.
And it’s still a major artery today, although it doesn’t carry nearly as
much traffic as we expected. It’s hard
to imagine how immense and sparse this area is.
The land changed shortly before we reached Dawson
Creek. We were now in farmland, not
forest and there were actual planted fields and fences, something we haven’t
seen much of since leaving Washington state.
Temporarily at least we were on the prairie. Which was fitting, since we spent that night
in Grand Prairie.
Grand Prairie’s population is about 55,000. But we
weren’t ready for the traffic! We really
hadn’t seen much traffic since Anchorage, and it wasn’t this bad. Luckily, we just cut across a corner of the
city on our way to our campground south of town. We were there just one night and then headed
for Jasper National Park.
All the park campgrounds were booked for the August long
holiday that Canada has. So we’re parked
at a KOA between the park and Hinton, AB.
Steve was anxious to get to the park, so after we got the trailer set
up, we headed in.
And right away, got our first animal shot, actually
2. First, an elk who obviously had no
fear of the humans or cars right next to the road.
And right across the road, two goats, who weren’t sure
about this.
The scenery in this park is stunning. Here are some pictures we took yesterday.
Today, we headed back into the park, and again our first
stop was for wildlife. Goats again.
Sometimes the scenery doesn’t look real. This shot is from Spirit Island at the far
end of the lake.
Back at the dock, we had lunch at the café there and
enjoyed more of the scenery.
Back in 1928, Curly Phillips decided he liked this place
and wanted to run a fishing business here.
Only there were no fish in the lake.
No problem. He imported
fingerlings (baby fish) and stocked the lake with rainbow trout. He built a boathouse that still functions
today.
Curly lived in the boathouse until his death. You can see why he chose this spot.
We left Maligne Lake and headed for Maligne Canyon,
stopping at a few vantage points along the way.
A mountain stream.
Medicine Lake.
Steve hiked part of trail along Maligne Canyon, which is
mostly a narrow, slot canyon.
As a result the water rushes through.
By then it was time to head for home. But we did have one more wildlife viewing –
another elk beside the road.
There’s really no way to describe this scenery and the
photos don’t really do it justice. If
you ever get a chance to get up this way, grab it.
Deb
