Hooray for radio

Listening to the radio, we learned that the Klondike Highway opened at 5:00 after some avalanches had been cleared. So we will leave here tomorrow morning and hope the snow and rocks stay where they belong. Most of the Alaska Highway we have to drive on has some snow cover and flurries are forecast for some of the area we have to travel through.
Listening to the radio we heard the weather for Yukon. They use Celsius where 0 is freezing, but still, most cities will hit minus temperatures and hover around 0 for highs tomorrow. Here, today, the thawing only lasted for about three hours. By four o'clock freezing had recommenced.

But Tempe had 100! Who wants that!?

Peggie took this picture at 8:53 pm. We're really happy we have blackout curtains in the bedroom and in the overhead skylight!

Things to do in Watson Lake

1. Laundry
2. Read (can be concurrent with 1.)
3. Play cribbage
4. Watch the ice on the truck and trailer melt and reform as icicles
5. Watch the big yellow front loader clear the other half of the RV park
6. Walk, very carefully on the slippery ice, to the grocery store next door
7. Listen to the radio (concurrent with 5 and 3)
8. Take your laptop to the laundry room to get wifi that doesn't quite reach to your site
9. When you have wifi connected, check to see if the road to Skagway is open yet. (Still no)
10. Turn the heat up (again)

Today=scheduled arrival

Schedules are flexible, right?
The Alaska Highway is now passable. Many areas are snow covered but have been plowed, so good to go.
Many of our fellow strandees are firing up their rigs and heading out.
The Klondike Highway is still impassable. We will remain in place until it is open. Under clear road conditions it is a six hour drive from here to Skagway. Add about three hours for the conditions we have.
60% chance of snow flurries tomorrow enroute.

Bell II to Watson Lake

Today was a DAY!
Remember the plan was to wake up early to beat the bridge closure. We woke up at 7:30. The cafe opened at 8 and we are not equipped to make coffee without electricity so we decided to make an omelette and get free coffee at 8.  The workers were already at the bridge and using flagmen to handle one lane traffic. The cafe actually opened at 8-ish and the coffee took a few minutes more. But it was fresh. And it was free. When we pulled out, I circled back over to the cafe to refill coffee and took the camera to get pictures of our snow-covered truck. Oh yeah, it had started snowing again right after we woke up. We pulled up to the flagman at the bridge. He came over to the window to talk, and as we talked, he got a call on his radio to the "flagperson at the bridge" saying that the man who just left Bell II pulling a trailer had left his camera in the cafe. The road was too narrow to turn around, but the flagman said I could leave the truck there and walk back. It was only 200 yards or so. It was snowing, but not windy and the temp was a balmy 32. So I got my morning exercise.
The snow? It kept up most of the day. At times we were in virtual white-out conditions and could barely tell where the driving lanes were and where the edge of the road was. Sometimes 25mph feels pretty fast. Visibility was about like headlights at night. Then, there were stretches with blue sky and clear road. On one of these we saw a pretty little red fox, and later at another clear spot we saw two caribou cross the road.
I was very happy to have 4wd in the snow. We saw very few other vehicles all day. Don't know if they had 4wd or not. Not sure I ever needed it, but since I had it engaged I did not get any slipping or wheel spinning, even on the steeper grates. (up to 8% in many places) The whole day was like living in a Currier and Ives illustration. Mountains would come and go in the clouds and falling snow. We were often surprised to get some clearing and see tall steep mountains all around us. The thermometer in the dash showed a low of 24 and a high of 34 as we traversed in and out of storms and up and down mountains.
Oh, and even with snow several inches deep on the road, there are still rough spots. Sometimes miles of road at a stretch had us crawling because it was so rough, not just snowy. Every time we stopped to go inside the trailer, something else had fallen. One time we discovered that the freezer had moved and there was a bag of frozen broth on the floor beside it. It had popped right out. One drawer in the kitchen came out and broke.
We thought we would get to Teslin today, but our speed was so slow that we decided to detour over to Watson Lake and get an RV park. All of the small places out in the boonies, like Bell II are still closed due to snow. Some of them haven't even opened the gas and store. We figured there would be at least one year-round park in Watson Lake. The first one we found has been open for about a month, but has only plowed half his sites. We had to shovel snow to find the sewer cap, and the water is shut off due to the cold. But we have electricity and wifi, and the holding tanks are empty. Word here is that the Alcan is not recommended as safe to travel, due to snow, and the Klondike Hwy is closed between Carcross and Skagway, probably an avalanche. We will check in the morning to see if we stay here another day.
Peggie has created an album of the scenes today and will try to post it here if we can remember how to do that.
And Xavier Rudd and a mix of blues make for good driving-in-the-snow music, too.

Bell II

Saturday,  April 27, 2013

We are parked in the front of a gas station/lodge/café?/rv park called Bell II.  Pronounce it Bell two. We are pleased that the gas station is open because we were down to about 5 gallons of fuel.  We did not pass any open stations. It is just that far. The rv park is NOT open because it is still under 3 feet of snow. The café? has hot split pea soup in a large crock pot, most certainly from a can. There are premade, wrapped sandwiches in the soda cooler,  individually saran wrapped cookies and muffins in a basket on the counter. The coffee is fresh and complimentary. The lone employee is friendly enough to answer questions, but doesn’t volunteer anything.

Did I mention snow? It is snowing right now. Big soft flakes. Visibility is 200 yards, maybe a little more. Can’t wait to see what we wake up to.

We drove to Prince Rupert this morning and think it is a quaint little seaport town.  We treated ourselves to fresh seafood for lunch. The drive in was beautiful, eventhough we had rain off and on all the way.  The snow level was about 3000 feet, except we got hail and snow mixture at sea level in town.  But it was sticking to trees at 3000 feet.  Less rain on the return to Terrace and the sun came out on the snow covered mountains. We gassed up, connected the trailer and headed back to catch the Cassiar/Stewart Hwy, number 37.

We saw three bears on the road between Kitwanga and here.  And Peggie, the new guide of the party, spotted all three of them without any help from me.  All three of them were small black, black bears and all looked healthy.  We spoke with some fellow travelers fueling up here and they said they saw a bear running with one front paw held up like it was injured.

We will go to bed early and get up early because the bridge here is being repaired and closes for a couple of hours several times a day. We need to cross before the first closing.

Zero, Zip, Nada, Zilch

What wildlife did we see today, Alex?
Correct. Select again.
Yesterday was such a good wildlife day that we used them all up. From Prince George to Terrace on Hwy 16, aka Yellowhead Highway, no animals. Although the moose warning signs were numerous.
I did remember a particular spot on the river (I don't know which river) near Telkwa from 1995. The wide, placid water suddenly shoots through a narrow channel between rocks. In '95 we all got out of the cars and went down to look at it. Today, I just pulled over to say "I remember that spot." Today and yesterday a lot of the rivers are muddy brown. There has been some rain so snow is melting and creating muddy runoff. We drove in some light rain off and on today.
Weird thing: we got gas today three times. Paid 125.9/ltr; 121.9; and 129.9; all three came to $97 and some cents.
Found out that Kitwanga, at the junction of Yellowhead and Cassiar, is pronounced kit-wong-ga, not ki-twang-ga.
The lumber industry up here is coming back to life after several years of idleness. Sawmills and pulpmills are working all through the area. Trucks and trains loaded with cut lumber and uncut timber are on the move.
And, of course, highway construction is in season again. We have not had any flagman delays yet, but that is due to the relatively light traffic. Many of the two lane roads we have traveled in the last couple of days are being improved to four lanes.
Today, our first choice RV park was full, and the back up was down to two spots due to construction crews in the area. One big project here (Terrace) is the Northwest pipeline that will bring natural gas down from Yukon to Vancouver.
Tomorrow we will drive to Prince Rupert, named for a guy who never came to Canada.

We Didn't See No Stinking Badgers

Today we drove from Kelowna to Prince George. We went west on 97c to Merritt, then west some more on 8 to Spences Bridge and north to Cache Creek and continued north on 97. The section on 8 and 1 is in the part of BC I never knew existed. It wasn't breath-takingly beautiful. It looked more like it should be in eastern Oregon or Nevada. A lot of sage and bare dirt. It felt hot. Not that it was hot, it looked like it was hot.
But, today was our best day yet for wildlife. We had seen some deer in Utah, then nothing until today. When we turned onto highway 1 at Spences Bridge, which, by the way, spans the Thompson River and has been replaced by a new concrete highway span, we saw a sign to watch for bighorn sheep on the road. Sure, we had seen the watch for deer and elk signs all the way from Cottonwood, so we were cynical.  But we saw about a dozen sheep just a couple of miles further on the hill above the road. So that was cool. Later we saw two bald eagles sitting on snags by the river. (There are a LOT of rivers and the roads tend to follow them.)  And another in a nest in a tree. We saw groups of deer 8 or 9 or 10 times. Margie, remember our surprise at the cougar sign at the Canyon? Today we saw a badger image sign that said "next 4 km". But, see the title of this post. Then about 40 miles south of Prince George, we saw the watch for moose sign. It must be old because it said "next 40 miles" instead of kilometers. See title and substitute moose for badgers.

But we did see a bear. First bear of the season. A small black on the edge of a road that connected to ours. It is fair that we both saw it, so we start out even. This is the only animal we stopped for. Partly because we could, but also cause it was a bear. I should get one of those bumper stickers "I Brake for Bears."
And we started the day with a bushy gray fox crossing the road in front of us as we approached Merritt. So this was a good wildlife day. We are hopeful now for the rest of the drive because we are in moose and bear country.
We are at Sintich RV park outside Prince George, and the wifi is working!