VIDEOS
Hello all,
Those of you who have been following along with the occasional individual photos and updates know I am well past the West in real time, but I get so busy adventuring that I don’t make the time to write about it. We can pick up where we left off, leaving Whitehorse headed East briefly back through BC and into Northern Alberta, in a segment I am going to call “ Mountains and THUNK and CRUNCH oh my”.
After Whitehorse there was one more stop in The Yukon, a night in Watson Lake. The drive down the rest of the Alaska Highway was pretty and had some interesting stops on it. The first stop was at the Teslin/Tlingit Cultural Centre, where they said you got to self select whether you were a senior or not for admission rate purposes. I decided to be an adult rather than a senior. The money goes to a good cause. They had a very good display about the history of the community and some nicely done carving and artwork. They also showed a video about a gathering that happens every 2 years with the coastal and Inland Tlingit Communities. These communities historically controlled the trade from the coast into the interior of what is now the Yukon. They also had fresh Bannock on offer by donation and when I went outside to check out their canoes I met a local community member who was out having a hotdog roast with his son and a friend from Texas. They would normally be barbequing salmon but there are no longer salmon in their waters so they have to get it from the community at Atlin, apparently at great price. The friend from Texas was a woman who travels in a converted Springer Van so we had a great discussion about road tripping and camping set ups and things. She has gone all over the US, much like I am doing with Canada.
After the Cultural Centre I visited the George Johnston Museum. The staff member at the Cultural Centre had recommended it as having a larger collection of nice Indigenous Art. I went in, paid my SENIOR, admission fee (they have a declared age of 60+) and checked it out. George Johnston was a local Indigenous man who happened to be a photographer and owned the first car in Teslin. He originally was a trapper/hunter but at one point decided he wanted to take pictures, he saved up some money and bought himself a camera. There was a challenge involved as he could not read so the instructions were no help at all. However, he was clearly a bright cookie as he managed to teach himself how to take pictures and to develop them. Thanks to him there is a lot of documentation of Teslin in the early part of the 20th C. Later on he decided that he wanted a car. The fact that there were no roads in Teslin did not seem to be a problem. He had the car shipped to him and then talked several of the local fellows into cutting a 3 km strip of road into the bush, in return for rides in the car. He continued to develop a network of roads based on offering “taxi” rides on his road to people for a fee then turned that fee into roadworks. The car was green and he used it for hunting as well as taxi rides. In the winter he would take it hunting out on the frozen lake. The only problem was that a bright green car on a white lake is pretty visible to game…. So every winter it was painted white and every summer it went back to green. They have the original car in the museum. The other side of the museum is about the Alaska Highway and the airport at Teslin which supplied the highway crews. The Alaska highway was really an engineering marvel, even if it had several major mishaps along the way.
From Teslin it was straight on to Watson Lake. I stayed in a former Air Force barracks which a German Canadian couple have turned into a motel. It is the oldest building in Watson Lake, originally built at the airport in WWII and then was moved to town, bought by the current owners and converted. It was comfortable, clean, and the hosts were lovely. He assured me that if I should need anything after their office hours (which ended at 11 pm) they were just a short ways off as they live in the travel trailer in the back yard in the summer. He said that he had even once had a guest come and knock on the door to ask for suggestions as they could not get to sleep… I assured him that I would have no trouble sleeping and that, even if I did, I would not be coming to wake him and his wife up over it! The next morning a quick look around Watson Lake revealed two tourist things in town, a planetarium style movie about the Northern Lights (the timing of which did not work so I gave it a pass) and the “Sign Post Forest”. The Sign Post Forest started during the building of the Alaska Highway. There was a sign post with distances to various local places. A service person who was there recovering from an injury was asked to refurbish the signs and he asked if he could add his home town. Soon others followed… then 100,000+ others followed. It now occupies a whole block of town. It has all sorts of different types of signs from simple graffiti on the various pieces of old AK Highway equipment that are there, to some very nice hand crafted signs, to stolen highway signs (Hey MOTI if you are looking for the missing Merritt sign I know where it is). There are also a few political statements and the obligatory “The Messiah has come” (complete with phone number). Some people seem very committed to this project and have multiple signs from their various visits to Watson Lake. Personally I would put it up there with Giant Geese (Wawa ON), and Alien Landing Pads (St. Paul AB). I wandered about a bit, took some pictures and then took my leave. I stopped at the visitor centre in Watson Lake and got a mile by mile sheet of places on the Alaska Highway and set off to see what I could see… and get some of the recommended ice cream at Toad River.
East of Watson Lake, I noticed absolute fields of fireweed on both sides of the roadway. As I drove through it I realised that this was likely what I had heard them talking about in the Yukon on the radio about using roadways as natural fire breaks and then widening the break to make it more effective. It also makes it really pretty.
Along the way the scenery of the Northern Rockies was absolutely spectacular, high angular mountains a couple of which even had a bit of snow on them. As I left Watson Lake I encountered the local herd of Wood Bison. This herd is a re-introduced one which has succeeded to the point that they are able to allow some hunting. Apparently the Bison live happily along the sides of the road all summer but as soon as it is hunting season and they hear the first snow mobile, whoosh, off they go and hide. No flies on them, well I am sure there are actual flies all over them but they have learned that snowmobiles mean death and they have learned this since being reintroduced because initially the process involved them being in an enclosure and then roaming free with no threat of becoming burgers. There were quite a lot of them and so I stopped to take some pictures. I took them from the car as recommended for roadside wildlife photography. I got a bunch before one rather large one gave me “the hairy eyeball” as if to say enough is enough… move along human. If you keep this up we will be asking you for a donation in return for us posing! So I moved along. I know that moose vs car always goes in favour of the moose but I am pretty sure charging bison vs car ends the same way.
Along this section of the Alaska Highway is Liard Hotsprings. This is the place with the most recommendations when I asked everyone where I should stop. So, I had to stop. There is a nice campground there, which the kind park person let me have a drive through to check out for future reference. In a tragic turn of events, I had gotten an infection in one of my incision sites from my gallbladder removal, which meant no soaking in the human soup for me. I decided that it would be a nice walk out anyway so I paid the $5 to visit the hotsprings and had a nice walk along the boardwalk. The pools are small but well set up and lovely and natural with a stone bottom and plants around it (as opposed to the ones at Radium Hotsprings which are basically a community pool with warm water). I debated just going and wading, but decided that I would rather walk up to the hanging gardens… which turned out to be closed.. so, basically it was a $5 fee to catalogue future opportunities for a next road trip, and one amusing moment when I read the sign on the electric fence which was all about protecting the rare and very local snail in the hotsprings. I had no idea that snails were so aggressive that they required an electric fence to keep them in their own area! Ok, it may have actually been to keep the bears out of the campsite but I was amused for quite some time by the image of marauding snails attacking the campsite with millions of them sacrificing themselves on the fence so their compatriots could climb over their martyred bodies and go over the fence “for King and Hot Spring!”
From the Hotspring I continued East, with the next stop being Muncho Lake. The Alaska Highway guide sheet said that one should stop at the lodge there for a really good meal, unfortunately I got there exactly half way between lunch and dinner while they were closed. The menu did look good but not worth waiting a few hours for, so onward I went. I stopped at several points along the lake to try to get a shot of the water that did the colour justice. I failed. I did get a few nice shots, including one with a float plane in it. Maybe one of Graham’s friend’s planes headed to his lodge on the lake. The road along the lake made me REALLY glad that I was not driving a big assed motor home, or frankly anything bigger than my Subaru! It was narrow, windy, full of road work and full of big semi’s with multiple trailers, and dropped directly down a cliff into the lake.
I finally made it down into Toad River and stopped at the local gas station for the recommended ice cream and to use the loo. The ice cream turned out to be pretty much standard soft serve but you served yourself, like on the ferries. The ice cream was fine but the biggest amusement was the children in front of me who really needed to be granted honorary architectural degrees for the amount of ice cream they managed to stack on a single cone/cup… I think the cup proved to be the best foundational structure. I went with a pretty run of the mill cone and headed on my way.
Coming out of Toad River there was a long, narrow, steep, curvy hill to climb. I as doing just fine until I saw a pickup with a trailer coming down the narrow, steep, curvy hill toward me with his trailer partly in my lane. I figured I had enough room to move to the right and miss his tail end, however there was also a large rock that had fallen off the rock face in my lane, right about where my tire would have to go if I wanted to stay shiny side up, not over the cliff, and miss the trailer. So, lesser of two evils, I went as far right as I dared without risking a nasty sideways downhill crash and hoped for the best. I missed the trailer but went “THUNK” over the rock with both my right side tires. I managed to stay in my lane, right side up, and my tires all appeared to stay inflated. The only apparent thing that did not like the thunk was my eyesight on the car as it promptly turned itself off and then got increasingly temperamental all the way to Grand Prairie… file this for future reference when I get to the Quebec part of the journey. I may not have gotten away quite as intact as I thought I did, or as intact as the the Subaru dealership in Grand Prairie thought I did having told me that the eyesight problem was dead bugs on the window and sun reflecting.
After I recovered from the THUNK incident I caught my breath and headed on to Fort Nelson. I passed more lovely scenery, more narrow windy roads, and hills, and stopped at a place called Boulder Canyon which looked to be a lovely hike out into the mountains but I had not researched it and did not have time to go check it out. I filed it for potential future use, took some photos and finished my drive to Fort Nelson. I did not see a lot of Fort Nelson, other than my motel which was lovely, clean and comfy, and the Boston Pizza where I grabbed dinner.
The next morning I stocked up on ice and groceries for my next stop, camping in Grande Prairie and away I went again. My path took me through the rest of the Alaska Highway to Fort St John. I stopped at a little place that again was recommended for ice cream, which this time turned out to be a good call. I got a very affordable and very tasty ice cream cone from a little local business staffed by a young woman from the local Old Order Mennonite Community, or at least that was my assumption based on her head covering and long skirt. As I worked my way through the rest of the Alaska Highway all was going well, the scenery was lovely, the road in good shape, and I was happily toodling along just West of Dawson Creek when “CRUNCH” a big truck going the other way threw a great big rock at my windshield. No question about whether this was a chip repair or a new windshield. The centre break was about 3 inches across and it immediately spidered left and right. Fortunately it was not across my field of vision.
I stopped at the tourist info place at Dawson Creek to make a call to ICBC. The tourist info centre at Dawson Creek is also a local art gallery. The were holding a show of work by various local artists and it was all mounted on the walls of a long ramp which went up the the three stories of the building with an open central area. It was a lovely way to display a lot of art in a small floor space. I very nearly bought some really cute stitched pictures of cats getting in trouble but there was no way I had room for framed art to travel with me for the next several months. When I talked to the info people and told them that I was also pulling over to start my glass claim with ICBC they said “let me guess, just outside Taylor?” Apparently for whatever reason trucks chuck rocks there a lot. I got a hold of ICBC and eventually got them to understand that the incident was in BC but that it was a long weekend and I was headed to Alberta so the repair was going to be in Alberta as I was not going to spend a long weekend in Dawson Creek waiting for a glass shop to open. This confused ICBC greatly and they told me I had to go to a shop in Alberta, get a quote, and then send it to ICBC and they would get back to them in 2-3 business days, and I could not get the work done then take my chances on getting paid back. I called everywhere in Grand Prairie but no one could do anything until the following Tuesday as it was last thing on Friday of a long weekend and no one in Grand Prairie had the window I needed in stock, and anyway ICBC told me that if I got them a quote that day they would not look at it until Tuesday and then would take the 2-3 days to bother replying. I told them that was not likely to happen as I was not sitting in Grande Prairie for three extra days AFTER the long weekend waiting on them. The hotel costs of what would be effectively an extra week would be more than just replacing the damn window ($1100 last time I had it done in BC). I then called all over the place, eventually landing on Windshield Doctor in Edmonton who could do it on Tuesday morning after the long weekend. I asked them to give me a quote explaining that I might be going through ICBC. They said that was fine, they dealt with ICBC fairly routinely. The quote…. $479 all in, less than my deductible in BC. I asked them why it was so much cheaper there and they told me that their glass coverage SUCKS so most people have to pay for their windows themselves which keeps the cost down as if it is too high people just don’t get it done. Next time I need a window replaced I feel a road trip to Calgary coming on. I booked it in for Tuesday and told ICBC to close the claim.
The drive from the Northern Rockies to Grande Prairie was really quite pretty. One drives down from the mountains into the Northern Alberta Prairies, going from the dark blues and dark greens of the mountains and trees to the yellows, and light greens of fields. I camped outside Grande Prairie at a place called Saskatoon Island Provincial Park, which is neither in Saskatoon nor is it an Island anymore. It does have lots of Saskatoon berries on it, which is what it was named for. I picked and had a few for snacks while walking about the park and say many people out with buckets picking. Saskatoons make amazing jam. My friend Mieke was an excellent tour guide, showing me around town, taking me to the highest point to see the view (the third floor of the local tourist info) and then out to see the local swans, who are apparently quite famous, and out for a very nice lunch. In the evening, there was a music and stories program offered at the camp ground and Mieke came out to join me for it. It turns out that it was really aimed at the kids in the campground and was a summer camp style campfire with stories and songs. My Artaban training kicked in when they said “This is a repeat after me song” and I immediately responded with “this is a repeat after me song”, impressing our hosts mightily as I was the only one who knew what to do, and I wasn’t even a kid. Mieke and I sang along with great gusto and enjoyed it at least as much as the little ones did. It turned out that two of the parks staff had been camp leaders and missed campfires so they started doing them at the campground.
On Friday I checked out of the campground, got my pre planned regular car servicing done and then headed to Edmonton to await my windshield. I booked in at the International Hostel as it was near to restaurants and things to do, even though I know it is a crap neighbourhood. The hostel has a camera on the parking and they do security checks during the night, and I hauled anything I really cared about into my room in the hostel, just in case. I took the chance to do some writing, do some laundry, and get some stuff sorted out. I also went out to Fort Edmonton which I remember enjoying last time I was there. This time it was just OK. I got off to a bad start when I tried to book in for brunch at the restaurant there and the website told me that they do not accept reservations for solo people. So I stopped in to see if I could get a table and they told me that, no they were booked up and I should have made a reservation. When I explained that their system did not allow single reservations the hostess said that I should have just booked two tickets and then shown up and just said I was one. Given it is a set price meal ticket I was not willing to risk paying twice. Pretty stupid system. I found a sandwich at another place in the park and asked for a coffee, “no” they told me, the only place that sold coffee in the park was the hotel… with the brunch that does not allow single people in.
In a less than stellar mood I headed off to check out the Indigenous Cultural Centre which was new at the park since I was there last and was what I really wanted to see. It is very well done and tells the stories of Indigenous and Metis people from the area form pre-contact to present and is staffed by Indigenous and Metis staff. They also had Metis fiddle player in the outdoor amphitheatre, so some music improved my humour somewhat. Then in the late afternoon I attended a theatre show, which was somehow connected to their Fringe Festival, I think. It was an interesting piece telling the story of the local Indigenous, Metis, and Settler communities with two scripts. Half the audience followed the Indigenous matriarch and half the settler matriarch and the stories wove in and out of each and the groups came together at some points and went separately at others, as the story progressed. I really like the concept but the story was simple and more than a little too on the nose for my taste. They also started the performance while guests were still in the fort in the park and the stage manager just let anyone who wanted to join the audience, so some of the action was hard to see and dialogue hard to hear as there were simply too many people in the room and people would come along for a bit then wander in and out, and my attempts to stand out of the way seemed to have me directly in the entrance/exit path of the actors at all times. All in all it was a good idea which might bear some further dramaturgy and another edit.
Finally it was Tuesday morning and I was all set to go and get my new windshield and get the heck out of Dodge. Three days is more than enough in Edmonton for my liking. As I took my first load of stuff out to my car I noticed that my car was more of a mess than usual and my cushions were in my front seat. A closer look revealed that some miscreant had broken into my car (I am still not sure why the alarm did not go off, possibly it was not working properly for the same reason my eyesight cameras were not working, why the security camera saw nothing, and how the “security checks” missed the dude sleeping in my car), gone thorough my stuff, slept in my car (even putting up my windshield screen so the bright security light did not ruin his beauty sleep) and using my pillow… which got donated and replaced, eeew), and taken a bunch of camping gear. I have slowly returned to some sort of empathy as, based on what he took, he is living outdoors and has an addiction problem, and his life sucks. However, at the time my initial response was none too charitable and has been removed from this post as one can’t tell who might read blog posts. Those of you who know me can use your imaginations. So, as I left Edmonton I had to replace a bunch of stuff. Thank God there is a Cabela’s in Edmonton and, to soothe myself I finally bought the very expensive, and much more functional than my old one, Yeti cooler that I have had my eye on.
I had one more night to stay somewhere before I joined friends to camp in Saskatchewan. I had had enough of Alberta and so I was going to get across the border. Then I realised that the only place I could get to in Saskatchewan was North Battleford, the “crime capital of Canada”. I reassessed my plan to leave Alberta and decided a night as close to Saskatchewan as I could get in Lloydminster (through which the AB/SK border runs) was a much better choice than one in North Battleford for the day after being robbed.
So, there we have it, my YT, BC, AB leg of the trip. Some definite challenges for poor Aurora with her Thunk and Crunch incidents and a bit of a rocky end for me, although I am very glad that the slime ball did not get anything that was important to me. In the grand scheme of things this part of the trip was lovely, with interesting things to see and beautiful scenery, and hopefully the end of problems for a while…