The Alaska Highway Drive began May 22nd and Ended May 31st

We started the drive on the Alaska Highway from Dawson Creek.

This is the Zero mile on the highway.

  1400+ miles later we are in Fairbanks, Alaska, the end of the highway.  During the building of the pioneer road by the Army Corp of Engineers in 1942, the official building ended in Delta Junction, Yukon, because there was already a road in existence from Delta Junction to Fairbanks.  The original road was built only to the extent that army supply equipment could travel over it.  It was the Public Road Administration in 1942-1943 who built the road to the standard that would support regular vehicles.  The PRA build all the permanent bridges and surfaced the road.

Jasper Tram Ride

Today we are in Jasper.  We had a great day.  We rode the

Tram up Whistler’s Mountain.  The tram ride was such fun.  Seven

Minutes up the side of a mountain. This shows the town of Jasper from the

Upper terminal of the tram.  We went up early in the morning with the idea

of having breakfast at the upper terminal.  We had just sat down with a cup

coffee and tea when all of a sudden we could not breathe and started coughing

severely.  My initial thought was that there was some sort of electrical fire, but

it turned out that someone had a canister of bear spray on their backpack and it

discharged.  It took about a half an hour before the ‘fragrance’  was dissipated.

This bear spray stuff is awful.   But after that we did have a really nice breakfast

and climbed the mountain from the upper terminal.

These pictures are of the tram and a view down the mountain toward the lower

terminal.

 And this is the mountain we climbed....Not bad for some 'old folks'

Banff and Lake Louise

Banff Alberta is a tourist/ski town for most of the year but in the summer, visitors come form all over the world to view the mountains and to see Lake Louise - about 50 miles north of the town.

The view of the Rockies are without words and pictures do not do it justice.

This picture Steve took from our campsite at Banff.  How is that for a backdrop.

We spent part of a day and drove to Lake Louise.  I am not sure why this location has drawn so much attention.  The lake is not very large.  It was still frozen over when we were there.

I think the drawing point is that there is a very large old hotel there that was built when the railroad was built.  It is a pretty location but we have seen many other areas in the Rockies just as post card pretty but without the hotel.  So maybe all of those folks really come to see the hotel not the lake.

Pictures from Calgary

It has been almost a week since WiFi has been available---so I will try to catch up with what has taken place over the last few days.  In my last post I told you how we had gone to the Olympic area in Calgary.

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These were two pictures of the ski jump at the center.  You could not get up into it, but I took the shot standing right next to it looking down the hill.  I really find it hard to think that people willingly jump off this thing.  You would have to start doing this as a very young child before you knew what you were doing and then......

As this picture shows there are four jumps of different heights - 90 meters, 70 meters and two shorter ones.  The information we found at the site indicates that there are actually more jumps made during the summer than during the winter.  They have some way of wetting down the artificial turf that makes it just like snow.

We stayed in the small town of Cochrane, Alberta just west of Calgary and this is the view from the town's main street.


We also attended an official professional bull riding contest that was held right next to the RV Park we stayed in.  It wasn't the 'offical' Calgary Stampede but it was as close as you get in May.

Calary, Alberta

Well, we made it to Calgary this afternoon.  We are staying outside of the city in a small town called Cochrane.  The campground sits right on the Bow River.  It is nice and so far quiet.  I still can't quite get use to all the daylight.  With the change in time - 2 hour difference - it is light here way past 10 o'clock. 

I took some pictures of the mountains as we were coming into town and I will post them tomorrow. 

We are going to go into Calgary and look around  tomorrow.  It should be a nice day---lots of sunshine and around 60 degrees.

What a Day!!!!!

When we arrived at Winnipeg yesterday we discovered that the whole area from Winnipeg west into the southeast portion of Saskatchewan had been declared a disaster area because of flooding.  Between all of the melted snow and continuing rain many of the rivers were waaaay beyond their banks.  So instead of staying there for a day or two, we decided to get up early and drive west to get out of the area before the road was closed.

As we were driving west on Highway 1, there was water on both sides of the road in many areas and water level up to the bottom of bridges.  In the town of Portage de Pairie, there is a diversion channel from there to Lake Manitoba that was so full of water that the folks there were thinking of breaching the dikes to flood over 500 square acres of land and some housed to save 800 homes in another part of the city.

Well, we made it to Regina, SK. the capital of Saskatchewan late today.  We drove all day (366 miles -  way beyond the norm) through rain, fog and high winds but the forecast for tomorrow is better.  The Temp here is only in the low 40's and with the wind blowing around 30 mph it is not much fun to be out.  Hope tomorrow is better.

Dryden, ON

We actually have found an RV campground in what Ontario back country calls a town.  Dryden has cell phone bars, cable TV, radio and even a Wal-Mart.  Can't beat that. 

It rained off and on today as we travel from Thunder Bay.  The roads are hilly and weave between the hills and Lake Superior.

The country is beautiful in a sense that it is about to wake-up from a long winter's nap and spring is just around the corner.

Tomorrow---off to Winnipeg.