Sunday, August 23, 2015

We are in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

It was a dark and stormy day.  Actually, 2 dark and stormy days.  The storm on the drive to Winnipeg yesterday was so bad we pulled over and took a nap until the worst was gone.  It took out a lot of electricity, including at the park we are staying at.  It’s been up and down several times since, but mostly up.  The wind is wicked and the clouds are scurrying across the sky.  It’s a good time to be curled up in front of the fireplace with a book.

Unfortunately, we have no fireplace and I’ve read all the real books I brought.  Curling up with my iPad and Kindle app just isn’t the same.

We have no photos for the last couple of days.  As we neared Winnipeg, the scenery began to look alot like Indiana, mostly flat and you could see trees on the horizon.  As we left Calgary, the only trees we saw were planted as wind breaks.  They are definitely needed up here.  The wind is fierce.  We have seen some windmills, but nothing like the numbers we have in Benton County back home.

The windbreaks are serious.  A typical one has at least three staggered rows of trees with a row of bushes on each side of the trees.  It frequently surrounds not only the house, but the barn buildings as well.  We get a little peek into some through the driveway opening as we pass by.

We’ve been traveling on the Trans Canada highway and it’s been a bit of a surprise.  Most of the time, it is not a limited access highway.  It is also not exactly smooth.  All during our tour and after on the Alaska highway, we encountered this sign indicating bumpy roads:

But the Trans Canada highway has had at least as many bumps and the majority are not marked.

It has all been paved, which is a change.  I’m still working on getting all the dust out from our tour.  It may be a never-ending task.  While the Alaska Highway is technically all paved, there are sections that are being rebuilt that are gravel or dirt.

I’ve looked back over my blog and realized I never blogged about Dawson City, where the Klondike gold rush was.  We went there after Whitehorse on our longest travel day with the tour, about 7 hours.  I remember being really tired.  We ran into town to find some dinner and came back and crashed.  It was 10 pm and 80 degrees and the sun was still up.  Spike, our tour leader, claimed we were 150 miles from the artic circle.  Sunset was supposed to be around 2 am.  It was June 15, so we were only a few days from the summer solstice, June 21.

For a small town (population under 2,000), there’s a lot to do in Dawson.  There are many buildings from the gold rush era and Parks Canada (Canada’s national parks system) has taken control of many of them.  They offer a walking tour of Dawson and we had a wonderful guide, Jonathan.

The post office and bank are two of the buildings that have been restored.

They’ve also restored one of the saloons.

Here’s Jonathan talking about the saloons in town.

We also saw Jack London’s cabin, which has been moved to Dawson City from its remote site and two replicas were made with the original logs.  The other replica is in Oakland, California, Jack London’s hometown.  Jack is probably best known as the author of the book “Call of the Wild”.

We then drove up to Midnight Dome, a hill overlooking Dawson.  The view was very hazy.  It was only later that we realized it was smoke from the Alaska wildfires.

We did get someone to take a picture of the two of us.

The next day was mostly a free day, so Susan and I went shopping.  This store had great stuffed animals.  I wanted to buy them all.

Susan’s favorite was the standing bear.

That night we panned for gold on the creek where the first Klondike gold was found.  Most of us who panned found at least a flake!

And, yes, I tried my hand and got a flake or two.

And some of the women had very stylish boots!

We had two free days in Dawson and Steve and I drove back up to Midnight Dome to see if the view was any clearer.  It was!

I don’t know if you’ll be able to see the two colors in the river.  The darker water is the fresh water from the Klondike River while the gray water is the glacial water of the Yukon River.  The glacial water has microscopic dust in it from the glaciers grinding rocks.  Fish can live in it, they’ve adapted.

Later that day we visited the Dawson City Museum, which was quite well done for a city that size and included 4 steam engines.  The railroad used to come this far north, but highways put it out of business.

Steve captured a picture of this house boat as we walked along the river.

Reminds me of Tom Sawyer.

Travel in Western Canada and Alaska has gone from foot and river to train to roads.  Dawson City was a transportation hub because of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers.  The Yukon River is 1980 miles long and connects British Columbia to the Bering Sea.  It was a major waterway plied by riverboats until the 1950’s when a highway to Dawson City was completed.  I think a riverboat cruise of the Yukon would be awesome.

This post is getting very long, so I’ll close for now.

Have a good day!

Deb

Thursday, August 20, 2015

We are in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.  We left Maple Creek yesterday morning and reached Regina in the afternoon.  The farther east we go, the flatter the land gets.  It looks much like Indiana, only with mostly wheat fields.

And a lot of bugs.  At the beginning of our Alaska tour, they installed a rock guard on the front of the truck to protect the radiator.  This is what it looked like when we got to Regina yesterday.

That’s more bugs than any other portion of our trip.

Regina is the capital of Saskatchewan and the home of the training center for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (who aren’t mounted anymore).  We visited the historic lieutenant governor’s mansion and the RCMP Heritage Center.

The mansion was built in 1891 and is furnished in Victorian style.  It had woodwork like Les and Charlie’s house and furniture like Becky has in her living room.  It also had a beautiful portrait of Queen Victoria that was original to the house.  Her face had a softer look than I usually see and she was wearing her tiny crown.  She had the small crown made because she suffered from migraines and the weight of the most of the crowns was just too much.

This is a picture of Queen Victoria with her small crown that I took off the Internet.

I’ve read that Queen Elizabeth practices wearing the crown she wears to the opening of Parliament for several days before she has to wear it in public, as it weighs about 12 pounds.  That would take some getting used to.

Steve and I were listening to our guide and forgot to take any pictures!  But here’s a picture of the outside.

Next up was a visit to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Heritage Center.  The RCMP trains it’s recruits in the training center next door.  It’s a six months course and it’s tough.  The Heritage Center documents their history.  These two stand at the entrance to the center.

 

 

The RCMP started as the North West Mounted Police in 1873, when the North West Territory was what is now the Yukon, North West Territories, Alberta, Saskatchewan and additional land.  They merged with other units as Canada consolidated and now police most of Canada, except Quebec and Ontario, which maintain their own police.

Canada is so diverse that the force has a lot of different duties.  They assume responsibilities that the FBI and Secret Service do in the US and also provide local policing for areas that do not have local police forces.  For much of rural Canada, they are the only police force.

If you are interested, there’s a good article at Wikipedia.

In the lobby was a display of photographs and artwork.  I like this photo taken in Dawson City around 1900.

It was “rapid” transportation because you could make better progress on ice and snow than on the rough terrain with a wagon.

The other picture was this sketch called “Hero in Red Serge” by C. Caldwell.

It’s a humorous look at the various duties a Mountie may be called on to perform.

We’re headed off again tomorrow, with one overnight stop before we reach Winnipeg.  Steve says we’ll be home in 3 weeks!

Deb

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

We are in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, and we have finally found the tourists we’ve been missing all summer.  They are all here.

We left Hinton, where we were parked, yesterday morning and headed for Banff.  To get there, we drove through Jasper National Park and got on the Icefields Parkway, which joins the two.  That gave us the chance to get one last look at Jasper.

The animals didn’t disappoint, as both the Big Horn sheep and the elk were out.  15 or 20 sheep covered a hillside beside the road.

No males with big horns this morning.

Shortly after we spotted 3 elk waking up beside the road.  Here’s one of them.

We’ve enjoyed seeing these animals most days and don’t know what Banff will bring.

Here are a couple of last pictures of Jasper National Park.

When we stopped to take the next picture, we encountered the first crowd of tourists.  There was a bus, several RVs and numerous cars parked at the overlook, but Steve managed to get a good shot of the glaciers.

Our next stop was at the Icefield Center, which promised displays, information and a restaurant.  We had packed our lunch, as we weren’t sure what time we might reach the Center, which was a good thing, as it was packed.  It was easily as packed as Disneyland has been.  And the exhibit area was closed.

Steve fought his way up to the observation floor and took a picture of the Athabasca glacier. 

It’s one of several glaciers that meet in the Columbia Ice Field above it.  In the photo, there are actually two buses on the glacier.

You could also drive to a parking lot below the glacier and walk up to it.  We didn’t do either, as the weather wasn’t looking too good and we still had quite a way to go.

I took a picture on our way back to the parking lot of the glacier and the fireweed we’ve grown to love.

Shortly after, it began to rain.  It rained all the way to the town of Banff and our campground just beyond.  The phone routed us through Banff and it was like trying to drive around campus at class change time.  I think we may be experiencing some culture shock, as we haven’t seen this much traffic, both vehicular and pedestrian since we left Bellingham, Washington.

But we made it to our campground and Steve got us set up in the rain.  The view out our back window is another camper, but when the rain stopped, Steve took this shot from our doorway.

Steve did his homework and everything said to get started early to avoid crowds.  The number one item to see in Banff according to TripAdvisor is Moraine Lake, so that’s where we headed.    I took this shot of the clouds nestled in among the mountain tops and hoped we would have a view to see when we got to the lake.

We identified two short trails and headed for the one with the best views.

So up Rock Pile trail we went.  It’s not long (300 meters), but mostly uphill.  And the lake is at 6,000 feet, but I made it.  My lungs and thighs felt it, though.

But the view made it worth it.  Here’s one mountain on the way up.

And here’s Moraine Lake.  The picture doesn’t do it justice.

It’s just gorgeous.

And, our wildlife picture of the day.

When we finished the rest of the crowds had arrived.  The parking lot was filled.  I think there was almost a mile of cars parked on the side of the road leading up to the parking lot.  I’m thankful that Steve got us going early!

Lake Louise, which is often the picture you see of Banff, was next on our list, but the traffic was so bad, we decided it wasn’t worth the fight and headed back towards our campground near the town of Banff.  There was a scenic route back, the Bow Valley Parkway, which promised more likelihood of seeing wildlife than the 4 lane divided highway, so we took that.

It had started clouding up again, so we didn’t have good luck with scenery shots.  But we stopped so Steve could hike part of Johnston Canyon and see the falls. 

We then headed for home before the rain came.

Deb