Oh Canada!

We left our cozy cabin Friday morning and headed north on the West Access route to Alaska according to our guide book. It was also known as Canada 1 and then BC99 to Prince George. We drove through the stunning Fraser Gorge.

We purchased the $29 book on driving to Alaska and we've found it to be just enough information so that we're learning some history along the way. We learned about Simon Fraser, the Grand Trunk Railroad (yes, that's Trunk...not Funk), the gold rush in 1858 in the Cariboo region, missionaries and miners, ranchers and First Nation peoples, logging, agriculture and tourism. We've seen the world's largest gold pan and the world's largest fly fishing rod.

We've seen bald eagles, deer, swans, Canada geese, a variety of hawks and water fowl (Dona...where are you when we need you?!?!?), and a snowshoe hare. In Arizona, we're familiar with signs that alert you to elk or deer. But badgers? Really? Badger crossings? And moose. So far...no moose. However, Mike pointed out moose scat and what the bushes look like after the moose have been eating them...he'd seen them in Denali last year with the same kind of chewed off stems.

We also saw a sign about The Phantom who was a grizzly bear who over a span of 4 years killed 30 cattle and had become a nuisance bear. He kept eluding traps and snares. Finally one day some predator control officers saw him trapped in a snare....but then they heard the snap of a wire. And then this 1012 lb. grizzly charged them. They each got off a single shot and the bear dropped 7 paces from where they stood. The story might have ended there but two years later, the attacks began again in the same area. It didn't take quite so long to get this bear who weighted only 25 lbs. less than the first bear. They feel that these bears are related. Now, so the sign says, there's rumor of a third Phantom grizzly. We ate our sandwiches in the car with the doors locked and drove off very quickly.

We've seen beaver dams and a ton of lakes, rivers and mountains. We've seen the "Arizona of Canada." Ok...it looks a little like high desert, but without pinon pines. There's a pine beetle that's endemic to the area that has cycles which kill off a good portion of the lodgepole pines. However, between warmer winters and dryer summers, the cycle has gone awry and there are vast swaths of damaged pine forest. The Canadians are trying to manage this by logging the dead trees as quickly as possible and planting a variety of pine trees, some not as palatable to the beetles.

We stayed at the Queensway motel in Prince George, a small but very clean motel...and very quiet. Here the roads we've been on follow the railroad tracks. Our cozy cabin in Hope was lovely, but the little thing trembled with passing trains. Queensway was quiet. We'd checked in to see what it would cost and as we were driving off to find more reasonable accommodations, the owner ran out from the office and negotiated with us down to the price we wanted. We didn't even care that he called it a senior rate.

He recommended we visit The Keg for dinner. We visited the menu on the wall outside its entrance door. With the lowest entree at $22, we walked on and ended up at the Coach's Corner at the Ramada. We enjoyed local brew and a delicious and reasonably priced dinner. We made new friends with 4 young people and spent a couple of hours discussing what to see, noting similarities and differences between US and Canadian laws (your dog needs a seatbelt here; rifles and shotguns must be registered), and rooting for Vancouver against Los Angeles in the Stanley cup playoffs.

Today we turned from our northbound BC99 to Canada 16, the Yellowhead Highway. It is taking us westward from Prince George to Haselton. We're staying at the Cataline Motel...again, very small and clean. The view from our room is of a sharp edged snow capped mountain. In the distance are more very craggy peaks, similar to the Rockies. In fact, we're only about 80 miles SW of the continental divide. Cataline was the name of a man who supplied the gold rush miners by bringing his goods via mule.

Tomorrow we plan to start up the Cassiar Hwy. Of all the roads we're taking to Skagway, these upcoming 450 miles are purported to be the roughest. While it is still a numbered highway and paved the whole length, it is much less traveled. It is also higher in elevation and latitude and prone to more frost heaves. Suffice to say, we do not plan to complete the whole highway tomorrow. We do plan on seeing a lot more wildlife, though!

Right now, the plan is to arrive in Skagway mid-day on Tuesday.