Catching up Friday - Sunday

This morning I was finally able to get onto the wireless at Mile Marker 0 RV Park in Dawson City, so here's an accounting of the last three days.  We'll leave this morning after getting propane service for the trailer, so I don't know how many miles we'll make today, but we are on the Alaska Highway now--built in 1942 from Dawson City to Delta Junction and we'll be following it along the way.

June 13—Dawson Creek Mile Marker 0 of the Alaskan Highway

We’ve had a 12 hour day today and are both beat. Drove from Jasper up here and after setting up the trailer, we went about 60 miles west to Chetwynd, BC where they were having the last day of the International Chainsaw Carving Championship. There were 12 carvers who placed in the awards and the carvings they did were beyond belief! This event started on Thursday and they could carve from 8 am to 6 pm and then today from 8 am until 1 pm. Massive sculpture!

We got there just in time to see the 60 minute event among the carvers located out in the middle of a field—one guy, the world champion chainsaw carver actually completed TWO works of art—a bear which sold at auction for $700 and an owl which sold for $450. Below are some images of the bear and owl.

When he completed the bear, he asked the judge how much time was left and she said 27 minutes. The first image is his first cut, then the owl after about 15 minutes and the last one is the final product. As a photographer, every instructor tells you to have a battery, a card, the manual and your camera. Well, I was tired and took only one camera and the card filled up, so the last two images are from my blackberry! Creative, aren’t I?

Tomorrow we need to take the trailer for a touch of service—the propane cook stove and oven aren’t right, then we’ll hit Wal-Mart for supplies and head up the Alaskan Highway. So far we have driven 3381 miles. We will post whenever we can, we are happy and well and glad we aren’t in Denver helping Mitch move. We’re both way too old for that!

June 12  Saturday morning I woke up freezing! It was a beautiful, clear, sunny day but colder than it had been and we didn’t turn on the furnace before going to bed. John graciously turned it on and got the trailer warm so I would get up and get ready to go to Athabasca Falls.

On the way south, he spotted a place to pull off the road and fish and wa-la, caught a big bull trout about 5 minutes after he started fishing—I hadn’t even had a chance to get my chair, knitting or camera down to the water.

Athabasca Falls was beautiful.




Driving back into the campground we had to stop—the elk mama’s were standing on the side of the road looking back towards their young ones—there were three calves so one had twins and the other was solo.

June 11

This morning we packed up and left Radium Hot Springs, traveling north to Golden and into Yoho National Park where we saw mountain goats—three adults and one baby…or as John says, “A cute as a button baby.” As you can see from the image, it was pretty young, and looked rather confused about the climbing on rocks routine.

Traveling into Banff National Park, we headed north on the Icefields Parkway for Jasper National Park. The Icefields Parkway provides unlimited opportunity to view beauty. Glaciers, ice fields, lakes, waterfalls and animals, it is stunning!

Bow Lake and Bow Glacier are shown below. There is ice on the lake, as you can see towards the middle of the image above the pine tree tops. The reflections were amazing! A bit further north is the Athasbasca Glacier where tour operators take you out on a bus into the ice fields or you can walk up to the base of it. We just looked—and I think the top of the mountain looks like God just iced it with about 100 feet of snow!

When we entered Jasper National Park the wildlife was waiting to show off—this bear liked the field of dandelions! It was located just at the junction of Banff and Jasper Parks.

We got a place to park the trailer at Whistlers Campground—no hookups, so we operated on the propane and battery power. In the evening, we went to Maligne Lake where John spotted this huge elk and on the way back the moose.