Since sending Hannah home, we have driven and driven and DRIVEN! Nic drove us all the way through Canada, and I am now writing from Valdez, AK. (Map Banff, Alberta, to Valdez, AK, to see approximately how far we’ve traveled – it’s shocking!) We are so grateful for our thousands of miles of safe and relatively uneventful travels. And we are grateful to be back in the good old USA where our cell phones work.

The Columbia Icefield from the Wilcox Pass hike. You can just barely see the parking lot where we camped in the right center area of the picture. The Athabasca Glacier is just to the right of the middle of the picture.

After dropping Hannah off in Banff, we had the opportunity to drive the scenic route to Jasper a third time – what a treat! There are few four-hour drives I would like to do three times in a row in short order, but the chance to stare up at those mountains again was far more of a blessing than a chore. The rain took a break and gave us a chance to hike Wilcox Pass, located just above the Icefields Centre where we had previously camped with Hannah. Our climb gave us expansive views of the Athabasca Glacier. On our way down, we watched a small series of avalanches on the glacier.

Not a bad view!

Our northbound driving began in earnest the following morning. We still drive slowly and rarely travel more than 300 miles a day, but with some diligence, we can really cover some ground. A typical driving day will start whenever we wake up. We have only had to set an alarm a handful of times in the last four months, so we may start the day at 7:30am or at 9:45am. We take a leisurely hour to eat breakfast and button up for travel. We drive until it’s time for a lunch break, and we try to find a scenic lunch stop if we can. We will drive another few hours in the afternoon, possibly stopping for groceries or some sightseeing. We stop for gas at least daily when we drive. The cost of gas for the trip from Banff to the Alaska border was equivalent to a mortgage payment, so you know we’re making frequent fuel stops! Sometimes we impulsively decide to keep driving until later in the evening if there is a free campsite in range. We have found a lot of freedom in having no definite plans, and it has been surprisingly easy to make decisions together. And what are we doing to fill the many hours of drive time? While Nic pays attention to the road and watches for wildlife, I alternate between a few activities: entertaining dogs, reading aloud (working through Looking for Alaska by Peter Jenkins now – such a good read), checking our super helpful mile-by-mile road guide for area info, crocheting, planning, using an app to find campsites. We can play music or the radio now after upgrading our stereo in California, but we don’t typically drive to a soundtrack. Even though Nic is manning the steering wheel, driving has definitely been a team effort. After four months on the road, I would give our teamwork an A-. I still occasionally do a bad job giving directions, and what I say doesn’t always make it from Nic’s ears to his brain. But I’d say we’re doing pretty well.

There is no real way to describe what we experienced on our drive through Canada. You can’t really understand it without having done the drive yourself. We covered miles and miles (or kilometers and kilometers) of pavement, typically on narrow two-lane roads. The roads were better than expected, although we don’t think the Canadians have very intuitive road signs. We drove through farmland, ranchland, dense forests, mountains. We crossed innumerable streams, creeks, and powerful rivers. Many times, we drove half an hour before seeing another vehicle. The distance between towns on these rural highways could easily be 100 miles, and the towns may be too sparsely populated to have anything more than a gas station offering a small grocery selection. We saw elk, moose, and deer, and our bear count as of today is 25. We heard the haunting call of loons at silently rippling inland lakes, the otherworldly sounds of elk in the middle of the night. We became very well-acquainted with the endless welcoming committees of mosquitoes at each campsite. We became thankful for the constant drizzle when we realized it kept these blood-sucking creatures at bay. We watched as our hours of daylight quickly increased to border on the ridiculous. As we neared the longest day of the year, we never really saw complete darkness, only a dim few hours of twilight. This part of the country didn’t immediately assail us with its beauty, as did Banff and Jasper. Rather, the many miles of natural splendor gradually built and built to a quiet and submissive type of beauty that’s hard to describe. We barely took out the camera on our trip north; capturing the whole thing on video and somehow magically condensing it to an hour would be a more effective way to share our surroundings. Truly, though, you can’t understand it until you’ve driven it.

Salmon Glacier

We took a unique detour to Stewart, BC, partway through our drive. We had been told by sea-going friends that the area made for a fun excursion. If you map it, you’ll see that tiny Stewart sits right across the international border from Hyder, AK, an even tinier town in southeastern Alaska (the part of the state that goes far south and hugs Canada). Both towns sit at the head of the Portland Canal, a long canal snaking inland from the ocean (why our sea-going friends knew about the area). The drive to Stewart took us through the coastal mountains, covered in dense foliage and cascading waterfalls, dramatically rising straight up into the clouds to hide their glacial coverings. Not wanting too much hassle at the border, we visited Hyder, AK, on our dirt bikes. The US doesn’t care one bit about this border crossing, probably because there is only one road in Hyder, and you can’t go too far on it before being in mountainous territory that would be near impossible to cross. We enjoyed being back on US soil for a brief time. I never thought a sign in miles per hour could be so heartwarming. We stopped at the tiny US Post Office to mail a few letters, and we were surprised to be greeted by a thick Wisconsin accent. The clerk was originally from Neenah, WI, of all places! As the weather deteriorated quickly towards its normal drizzle, we took the one road through Hyder into the mountains and toward Salmon Glacier, the fifth largest glacier in Canada. Frigid and wet, we snapped a few pictures of the enormous icy expanse, tried not to slip down the rocks by the viewpoint, and made our way carefully and quickly back down the narrow snow-rimmed dirt road. The Canadians do make you stop at the border on the way back to Stewart, but we proceeded through very quickly without firearms, food, or dogs.

The surface of Salmon Glacier.

A few days later, we made it to the Alaska Highway and started seeing distances to Alaskan cities on road signs. The Alaska Highway is known for its rougher parts: gravel breaks, frost heaves, and potholes. Between the stretches of good pavement, we experienced plenty of those rough parts. Caused by building a road over permafrost tundra that expands and contracts with the fluctuating air temps, frost heaves are a major nuisance. We had heard about them before doing the drive and pictured pavement that moved up and down gently enough to make for a little bit of a rollercoaster feeling. Some frost heaves are gentle, but many are abrupt enough to cause us to catch a little bit of air, even when we slow down considerably. So in an RV like ours, you end up driving 55 in the best of conditions until you’re going too fast when you hit a frost heave. You’re grateful you didn’t do permanent damage to your spinal column or some piece of vehicle, but now you’re paranoid, so you drive the next hour at 40, slowing to 25-30 for many of the rough patches. It makes for bad gas mileage and slow going, and we can’t say it was particularly fun. The Alaska Highway has few signs, but a rather high percentage of them advertise tire or windshield repair or towing services. I wonder why. Aside from our now-delicate nerves, our only other damage sustained so far was a small chip in our windshield from a speedy passing semi kicking up gravel and a cabinet door that was knocked off its hinges by the turbulence. We consider ourselves extremely fortunate, especially after passing by several vehicles with blown engines and an RV that sustained considerable damage to its side after someone crossed the centerline. One wrong move on this road, and our vacation could be over.

We took a welcome provisioning day in the bustling town of Whitehorse, Yukon. About 27,000 of Yukon’s 36,000 inhabitants live in Whitehorse, so it felt like a metropolis after the previous few days. We tried to be grateful for the feeble wifi we could get to make Father’s Day phone calls, although we were growing more and more impatient for the day we’d be able to use our phones normally. We visited another Real Canadian Superstore, the same store where we had bought our first Canadian groceries. I wrote a few posts back about how much we loved their version of skyr (best yogurt ever). When you’re on a long road trip and free to indulge in all sorts of craziness, you may think to buy a cheap cooler and purchase a few extra containers of skyr. We bought 16. Yep, that’s right. I won’t share how much of the 17.6 pounds of skyr we have consumed in the last five days.

Priorities.

We celebrated our 8^th anniversary on June 19 by crossing the border back into the wonderful United States of America. The customs official came out of the building to love up on Luna and bring us a handful of organic dog treats from Ohio. She didn’t ask to see our firearms and let us into the country with green peppers, only on the condition that we were extremely careful with the seeds and stems. We wondered later what that meant – should we save them all in a baggy and bring them back to her? Handle them very delicately? Count them precisely? Rock them gently to sleep singing sweet lullabies? I don’t know why Alaska cares if we bring in a few green peppers; they can’t possibly grow them up here. With her green light and warm, “Welcome to Alaska!” we sped off into our very own country. I’m just kidding – no speeding here. We drove very carefully and deliberately over the numerous road hazards the Alaska Highway throws at drivers. We’re glad to be in the USA!

Looking back at Canada from our first campsite in Alaska.