Canada

Again we are one of the last Alaska-bound RVers to leave the campground in the morning. Not sure why we always leave later than most, but we do. As usual several RVers take off at 6am. We wake up at the sound of the diesels, look at our watches and then go back to sleep :-)

We have a 180 mile trip to Teslin Lake, The Yukon today.

Our first stop is for a short hike to a waterfall.

We make a few other short stops, but our most memorable part of the trip is the 15 km of gravel road that we drive on. Slow, bumpy and most of all: DUSTY where it’s dry, and muddy where it’s wet.

We arrive at Teslin Lake and after we set up, Jere washes the worst of the mud off the trailer. We have a snack and a bald eagle flies overhead and lands on the spruce tree at the end of the campground, so we get to watch the eagle while we eat our snack.

Then we take off to look at the wildlife exhibit here at the RV Park. Later we drive up the road to look at the area. We had hoped to visit at least one of the two museums here, but they are both still closed for the season. They both look nice from the outside, so we’re disappointed.

We stop by the Teslin Lake to read the signs about the area

And then also stop by the Tlinglit museum to look at the totem poles outside the building.

The evening is spent relaxing and watching one of two TV stations here, APTN (Aboriginal People Television Network). It has some interesting shows.

Joe had trouble falling asleep last night and has requested that his skylight be covered, so we spend some time making his room darker. It stays light til 11-11:30 at night this far north. Within the next week it will be light til midnight, so we are using covers, pillows and pieces of cardboard to block out as much light from the bedrooms as we can. It's harder to sleep when it's still light outside than we thought it would be :-)

I start the day with a quick walk around the park and the hotsprings. There are already a dozen or so people in the hotsprings!

Then we pack up (again) for the 130 mile drive to Watson Lake, The Yukon. Not too many stops or wildlife sightings today. We do see a stray buffalo every once in awhile.

By lunchtime we are at Watson Lake Downtown RV Park. There are a few RVers here already but in the next few hours the park will be filled with almost 75 other RVs—all of us headed to Alaska. The park is basically a gravel parking lot, but it has water, electric and cable TV....

There are an amazing number of trailers and motorhomes heading to Alaska and we’re supposedly ahead of the summer rush. We all complain about the price of gas, but we keep paying for it and not changing our plans to make the great RV trip to Alaska.

Our first order of business is lunch, but next is a nice hot shower! The last 3 days of dry camping had wonderful scenery but we were running low on water. Unlike most of the national or state parks in the U.S., the BC provincial parks do not provide a place to fill up the RV with water. So no showers for us the last two days.

We relax a little and then walk over to the Watson Lake Sign Forest. They have thousands (current count is around 61,000) of signs posted by people for their home towns from all over the world. We couldn’t find one from Mechanicsburg, PA (our hometown) but we did find one for Harrisburg PA.

Then a snack and a visit to the Northern Lights Center to see their show about the northern lights. They also have a movie about the planet Mars. The one on Mars is actually more interesting than the Yukon northern lights show.

Some dinner, some internet, some TV, etc and we call it a day

We pack up (again) and leave the campsite, our latest start in weeks: 11am. We are enjoying the incredible view from our table window, so we aren’t moving very fast. The blue-green water here is very pretty this morning.

We drive a few miles down the road and pull over to look at more Stone sheep. They are licking the salt from the side of the road.

We also stop for a short hike to a scenic overlook. There is often wildlife seen there, but not today – today’s only wildlife is the huge BC mosquitoes! They're at least twice the size of the ones back home in PA.

Our stop today is at Laird River Hotsprings Provincial park. They have room in their campground so we spend our 3rd night in a row dry camping, but the scenery for these parks is wonderful – so much nicer than the many “parking lot” RV parks we’ve stayed at.

We weren’t sure if the springs would be open since we had seen in someone’s blog (who are also traveling to Alaska, but are a few days ahead of us) that the springs were closed the afternoon that they stopped due a bear that had bathers trapped in the spring. The rangers had chased the bear away so the bathers could get out, but they had the springs closed while the rangers tried to locate the bear and prevent it from returning.

No bears at the springs today, so we have lunch and head up to the springs. We walk to the furthest spring first and I am not impressed – murky blue-green water. No way I’m getting in that stuff, but Jere swims around in it and enjoys the hot water. Jere wants to swim in a place where he can see snow on the mountains :-)

After about ten minutes we return to the first spring (where it’s clear and I can see the many pebbles on the bottom) and have a great time. We stay in the far end of the spring where it’s not as hot – not sure how long we were in, but it must have been at least an hour. Joe found a large log and was floating around on that for awhile.

We walk back, have dinner and start a campfire. Jere and I go for a walk while Joe enjoys his campfire. The campground is full – it’s a weekend and it’s a very nice park. We walk out to the road and see a buffalo. I’m hesitant to get too close for pictures, so we decide to go back to the campsite and drive the truck back for pictures. The buffalo must only be about 100 yards from our campsite (our campsite is in the woods on the right of the picture below). There’s also another group of buffalo up the road so we take a look at them also.

Then we return to the campsite to sit by the fire and tell Joe that what we thought was a deer path beside our campsite is actually a buffalo path :-)

Then for our third evening in a row, we end the day by making s’mores by the campfire :-) Another great day in British Columbia.

We leave our wonderful campsite overlooking the Summit Lake at Stone Mtn Provincial Park.

On the drive out of the park we see a Stone Sheep.

The drive today is short, about 50 miles. Our first stop today is at the Toad River Lodge to gas up and check out their collection of hats. Their ceiling is lined with thousands of baseball type hats. Very odd. But unfortunately the thing that is most memorable to us is that we pay $1.28 for a liter of diesel—that’s $4.86/gallon! Almost hitting the $5/gallon mark :-(

We see some incredible scenery as we traverse the northern part of the Rocky Mountains.

We stop at another beautiful lakeside campsite today: the shoreline of Muncho Lake BC Provincial Park (Strawberry Flats Campground). We’re the first ‘campers’ here so we get our pick of sites and select one with a beautiful view of the lake. We thought yesterday’s campsite had incredible scenery, but this site might be even more scenic.

We have another incredibly gorgeous view from our table window:

We spend the rest of the day relaxing by the lake….

And end the day with a campfire and s’mores. I try making a banana boat over the campfire for Jere and Joe (slice a long opening in an unpeeled banana and stuff it with chocolate chips and mini-marshmallows; wrap it with foil and roast), but I think we’re going to stick with s’mores for the rest of the trip :-) The roasted banana is NOT very yummy looking.

I’m sitting at the table watching a very large beaver swim around in the lake beside our trailer. Most of the lake is still frozen. The exception is the end of the lake beside our trailer. He’s been swimming there for the last 30 minutes or so.

Anyway, we’re parked on the shore of Summit Lake in the northern Rockie Mts at Stone Mtn. BC provincial park. It’s the highest point on the Alaska Highway, around 4200 ft. It’s a little chilly here, but Jere really liked the scenery and for most of the day we’ve had the campground to ourselves.

We drove 90 miles today. We saw a herd of bison (it was a bison ranch), several black bears, some elk and some moose. We were looking for caribou, but didn’t see any today. Hopefully tomorrow.

Our only stop today was at the Tsetse River Lodge for their “Best in the Galactic” cinnamon rolls. They were delicious and we enjoyed looking at all of the paraphernalia hanging on the walls while we ate.

We spent the rest of the afternoon by the lakeside here with a fire going and enjoying the scenery. We started to go on a trail beside the lake earlier today but there was just too much snow and there was a moose on the hillside above us so we weren’t sure if he would share the trail with us :-)

The view from our window is incredibly wonderful:

A view of the frozen lake the next morning: