Bears, bears, bears and an occasional Moose

And so the second leg of the long haul begins!

We traveled from Banff to Whitecourt, Alberta to Fort St. John, British Columbia, to Dawson Creek, Fort Nelson, Watson Lake, Yukon, and finally Whitehorse, Yukon.

This is Mile "O" of the Alaska Highway. A photo op! We met a man from Vermont here that is traveling to Alaska on a motorcycle. Wow!

When we stopped at Fort Nelson for lunch, we walked over to the Heritage Museum. What a neat place! There are all kinds of artifacts from when the army built the Alaska Highway, and a very interesting film about it. It really showed how difficult it was to build the first road through the wilderness. And history about why it was built for the army to get supplies to Alaska when there was a fear that the Japanese would attack from the north. The museum people were very knowledgeable, and interesting. Jim had quite a long talk with Marl, the owner of the museum. Marl was quite something with his long white beard and hair. Is he left over from the original crew? I wasn't really sure there would be two of us leaving the museum!

After Fort Nelson we ran into some of the steepest hills, and the most wind we have had. Makes for slow going.

The next day was the rainiest we have had, which made stopping at the Laird Hot Springs not as inviting as it sounded in the book, although there were quite a few people enjoying the 100 degree water.

We've been keeping our eyes out for wildlife, and haven't been disappointed. Sometimes they are easy to see ahead of time, and we can pull off and get pictures, and sometimes not. We were really lucky with this guy. He was not about to stop his lunch just because we were there! Others take one look and run off. Jim's new lens really makes them look closer than we were to him.

We did see some moose, but they have not been where we could get good pictures. The bison are settled down along the roadside in small groups. It was all bulls, no signs of females or young. Ahhhh, but many "signs" of many bison.

When we stopped for the night in Fort Nelson, we were right down the road from Sign Post Forest. A lonely soldier hung a sign for his hometown back in 1942. There are now over 60,000 signs! This picture shows just one layer of them. They go on and on! We found one for Corning, and one for Cortland. In the evening we walked across the road to see the Northern Lights Center where they had a film on Canadians and the space station, and then one with a explanation and pictures of the Northern Lights.

I doubt that we will see any of them. We are only in Canada, and it doesn't get dark until after 10:00 at night, and the sun comes up before 4:00. This is practice for the 24 hours of light that we are heading for!

In addition to the animals, sign post forests and museums there is always the scenery to marvel at. Around every corner and over every hill the views amaze us. For the most part the road has been in nice shape like in the picture below. It has had narrower shoulders in some sections. We have run into some construction since arriving in the Yukon and expect some really rough road as we start across the tundra section of the Alaska Hwy.

We are in Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon. We decided that it would be worth it to stop for a few days. There are some interesting things here to see, and some business to take care of. Then it is on the road again.

Jim and Sue