Day 8

If you have read our previous posts... you know that we had a heck of a time finding a place to live. We ended up having a coworker do a walk through of a condo the week before the wedding. We weren't going to be too picky since we weren't there in person to find a place to stay; we just needed someone to make sure our future home was livable. The walk through went great and we signed the lease two days before our wedding! If we didn't get a place signed before our wedding, we would have moved to Anchorage homeless. Talk about nerve wracking!

Our new mailing address is:

5851 E 6th Ave Apt A
Anchorage, AK 99504

We will also have a home land line (something we weren't planning on getting). Turns out, the only way to get cable internet here in Anchorage with unlimited downloads and uploads, is to purchase a package from the cable company. They don't really have anything to do with each other, it's simply the cable company's way of getting people to purchase additional, unneeded features from them. We do not currently have a designated phone number, but we should have one assigned to us in a couple days.

For those of you that don't know, all of our household goods are currently in a moving truck scheduled for delivery sometime after June 13. Because of this, what we had to pack in our Rondo was everything we would temporarily need to last us 3 weeks. We packed our car as full as it could get, and we managed to get everything here we needed. Our condo is pretty empty right now, the upcoming move in date should be the fun one.

Today was another day of getting everything organized and settled. We actually made a trip to the local grocery store here to buy everything anyone would initially need for food and cleaning supplies. For those of you who don't know me good enough, I can rack up a pretty hefty grocery bill. My previous record for groceries solely for myself was a little over $200. We blew that number out of the water today! We spent a whopping $645 tonight!! We were trying to guess what our damage was going to be before we got to the check out counter, and Danielle was the closest with a guess of $550.

We will post the pictures of our new place sometime tomorrow.

Day 7

Well not too much interesting happened today. We spent the entire day tending to our huge list of things we needed to get done once in Alaska. We mainly spent the entire day on our computers as we won't have internet access in our condo for a week or so once we move in tomorrow.

Something funny happened today tho. We got in our car and noticed that the cat kennels were melting from the heat and the added weight on top of them. After pulling over and rearranging the back seat, we jumped back into the car. I look over at Danielle and she's holding her face in pain. She then proceeds to look at me with tears in her eyes and says" Does my face hurt?" I starred at her in shock as she looked at me expecting an answer. Turns out out, she opened the front door of the car, directly into her nose and forehead. I was concerned for a second that she might have given herself a minor concussion (from the goofy question), but after talking to her and laughing a little bit, we decided to chalk that question up to mispoken words. She actually meant to ask me if her face looked red.

Weather update... temp got up to 78 today. There was a brief, but torrential down pour. It came out of no where and just dumped for 15 minutes straight. I've seen comparable downpours, but only in the heart of a major thunderstorm or hurricane. It also dumped pea-sized hail (I was hoping we got away from that part of the weather).

Day 6

We're here! (well sorta). We are actually in Palmer Alaska. It is a city about 40 miles north of Anchorage. The reason we aren't in Anchorage right now is because our lease does not start until Monday morning. To stay the night in an Anchorage hotel during this month it would have cost us more than $150, but to stay here, it only costs us half!

Well, we started the day a little later today knowing we only had 500 miles to travel. We crossed the Canada-Alaska border after only 20 miles of driving. Customs this time around was a lot more lax. It consisted of the boarder patrol asking where we are coming from, where we are going, and what we are doing there. They didn't ask us a million ridiculous questions or unpack our entire car like the Canadian boarder patrol.

Looking back, it's kind of funny how amazed we were the first day we set our eyes on the hills and mountains of Canada. The reason I say this is because every day since then , the mountains became more beautiful and more unbelievable with each day we got closer to Anchorage. It's safe to say now that this place has the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen!

The only animals we saw today were smaller ones. Some more of the usual... tundra swans, ravens, little squirrels, and miscellaneous birds. We saw a new animals today tho... a fox! He was a little bigger than the fox we have back in the Midwest, but he wasn't shy about running back and forth across the road. He was probably looking for some of the funny colored bunny rabbits we saw today. There are the normal dark gray rabbits, but we also saw a couple spotted and colored rabbits, rabbits with black and white scattered in different patterns (no pictures tho).

We have been seeing snow on the tops of various mountains, but today we saw snow scattered along the side of the highway in a few places. It was the first time either of us have seen snow in the middle of summer! It's not like that all over Alaska, just that part of the highway due to it's elevation! Along the same stretch of highway, we got to see our first glacier! It was beautiful! I can only imagine how big it would be and what it would look like if it was mid winter instead of mid summer.

Tomorrow will be a day of catching up and getting a lot of errands done. We may or may not travel into Anchorage... we'll decide tomorrow depending on how much we get done. Feel free to call or email... we now have somewhat consistent contact with the world.

Day 5

This is a picture of outside at midnight!

We both started out the day "coughing up hairballs"....thanks to our cats! No-we aren't licking them, but inhaling hair 24/7....you would think they'd be bald by now! We traveled 700 miles today for a grand total of 3100 miles traveled so far.

We made note of numerous people making the Alaska Highway trip on motorcycles--wow! I'm sure it is an amazing experience, but I can't imagine dodging bison, taking gravel detours, and soaking up the rain....props to those men and women!

Not only are people enjoying the scenery by motorcyle, but also bicycle! We aren't quite sure how it works out for them, but yes, people are on bikes packed with or pulling a cart of equipment.......it is difficult enough for the cars and trucks to navigate the mountain declines/inclines and turns!

One place we stopped at for gas had a northern wildlife gallery, it was actually quite remarkable. If we haven't already, we WILL be seeing wolves, massive bull moose, golden eagles, arctic fox, grizzly, brown, black, and polar bears, ginormous fish, mule deer, musk oxen, beaver and caribou. It is kind of overwhelming-compared to Iowa wildlife!

Some wild animals we didn't expect to see in Canada or Alaska were horses! Apparently some run wild here, there are even caution signs for their habitat areas. We finally had proof of it today with a small herd of wild horses grazing along the road!

The Yukon territorial bird is the Ravon and my goodness..... they are bigger than chickens! We have yet to catch a picture of one of these beastly birds!

We both agree, we saw one of the most beautiful places on Earth today. It is in the Yukon--and ironically called "Destruction Bay". Our book didn't tell us the reasoning on the name-but there is absolutely nothing destructive about it. It is a bay of the clearest, blue/green salt water ever. Even though it was chilly---we felt tempted to swim in the water! The scenery was breath-taking---a bay of calm, gorgeous water, surrounded by mountains! Like something from a movie. No words or pictures can do it justice---it has to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth!

The roads were a bit nauseating today, besides the construction and gravel detours, there were "frost heaves". We somewhat have these in Iowa-places in the road that buckle due to winter weather. We were on a craaaaazy rollercoaster ride today---dips and potholes in the rode caused us and the cats to be very uncomfortable! (speed didn't matter)

Another beauiful sight we saw today was a cow-moose wading and eating along the side of a lake. We could have watched her for hours! In the same lake was a tundra swan sitting on her nest. Two AWESOME photo-opps in one location!

We are now in Beaver Creek--an itty-bitty, side of the road town. Two nights in a row we have gotten lucky to find a small "town" with a place to stay and food to eat. We have been preparing ourselves for sleeping in the car....more like NOT sleeping because of the cats and lack of darkness. It is still light out at midnight! *picture* But no worries...we are 20 miles from the Alaskan/Canada border and will make it to Anchorage tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PS: I believe I saw a Golden Eagle today!!

(no picture, but it was a HUGE bird and pretty golden!)

Day 4

Hands down, this was (and will be) the best day of driving on the trip. We said yesterday was a scenic drive… well today easily trumps yesterday… 10 times! Words and even pictures cannot describe how beautiful of a drive today was, but I will try to describe and show it to you as best as I can.

We ended up driving only 500 miles today, due to the frequent stops to gaze at scenery and animals, and because of the winding roads, constant construction, and patchy rain (bringing our total miles to 2400). The rain proved to be fairly dangerous too. It wasn’t dangerous as in limiting visibility, it was dangerous because it would puddle on the road everywhere causing frequent hydroplaning (for some reason, the roads don’t drain water like we are used to). The one good thing about the constant drizzle throughout day was that it contributed to an increased sighting of wildlife! We were told that wildlife typically bed down or have limited movement during the daylight hours, but when it’s cloudy or raining/snowing, they are more active during the day.... we now welcome the rain on every drive!

The first animal we saw today was a lonely black bear. We were thrilled! It was grazing on the side of the road, and of course, we had to SLAM on our breaks to shoot some quick pictures and watch. We didn’t know when we were watching this bear for close to 30 minutes that we would later see 7 other black bears! We ended up seeing a momma bear with her two cubs and 4 other single grazers at different spots on the side of the road.

The second animal we saw was the one we wanted to see the most… a MOOSE! It was amazing! We came around a corner and saw the young bull moose standing right next to the road. He was beautiful! He wasn’t scared of cars and he let us park 30 feet from him to gaze and take pictures. Animals like this moose are not only directly dangerous for drivers, but also indirectly dangerous. I say this because they result in tourists like us pulling over, half on and half off the winding highway, weighing the benefit of sightseeing higher than the risk of blocking traffic. Shoulder width varies considerably as does traffic (which on average is probably 2 passing cars every 5 minutes), but there is always enough room to stop and take a picture.

The third animal we saw was very funny looking to us. We came across a young caribou running around like a chicken with his head cut off. He was swerving back and forth across the road and looked like he had no idea where he was (we later found out that is exactly how all of them act). They are very goofy and clumsy looking animals, but it was very exciting to see.

The fourth animal we came across was a small brown bear. It was fairly skittish but we managed to snap a few pictures of the little guy. They look somewhat similar to the black bears, but they are a little lankier. I can’t wait to see a grizzly bear as the bears we have seen so far aren’t much bigger than a large dog.

We soon stumbled across a place called Muncho Lake. This place was gorgeous! You know how you look at pictures in magazines and see the perfect green/blue color of the water and transparent clarity?!? Well, this lake is that picture! We were in shock by the beauty of this place.

After a day full of beautiful driving, we decided to stop and enjoy ourselves at Liard Hot Springs. The natural sulfur springs were exactly what we needed. There were two different pools there, the ALPHA pool and BETA pool. The alpha pool was shallow and was a small creek like area only 2 feet at it’s deepest point. The Beta pool was very large circular area about 30 feet in diameter and 9 feet deep. We swam in both and chatted with some very interesting people!

After leaving the springs, we drove about a mile and on our right was 10 bison, just relaxing on the side of the highway. There were two babies in the mix, but the momma didn’t seem to care that we were in a car. Among the batch was an adult with a tracking collar attached to it as well. Little did we know we would soon stumble across an even larger herd! Yup, just about 30 miles down the road we drove up on a herd of 27 more bison. In this herd there were 6 babies and a couple more collard adults.

At this point, it’s about 8:30 at night and we still have about 120 miles to drive before we are in a town with lodging. You have to understand that the combination of how far apart these little towns are spread and the variable driving time, it makes it extremely difficult to estimate or predict when and where you are going to be. So we just cross our fingers and hope that this small town (population less than 50) has some kind of vacancy in a motel when we get there so we do not have to sleep in our car!

Anyway, while we are driving to our desired town, we notice that the forest on bothsides of us looks as if it had gone through a forest fire sometime in the past. Most trees are still standing, those that are standing have charred bases, and the entire forest floor is black. Turns out, the fire happened recently… in fact, so recently, that it was still happening! Yup, we actually got to drive by an active forest fire (although it was in its final stages). There were patches of smoke along the road and every now and then you could catch a glimpse of a small flame. I can’t tell you how much forest was involved in this fire, but I can tell you that we drove about 20 miles next to scorched forest. We later found out that the fire was started by a lightning strike and has been burning for 27 days straight. It’s funny how a fire can be started by something that accompanies rain.

Well, we finally reached our goal town of the night (Watson Lake). We were starving and exhausted from driving all day. Unfortunately, we were not done driving! Turns out, all 4 motels in the town were booked full! The next city on the highway was about 70 miles up the road too L We were convinced that we were going to be sleeping in our car that night, so we turned our focus to finding some place to eat dinner, unfortunately for us, everywhere in the town was also done serving food! So we got back on the road, with empty stomachs, looking for a place to park and call a night. Lucky for us, after 10 minutes on the road we stumbled across a small place in the middle of nowhere called Nugget City. These people were the friendliest people we have met so far. Not only did they have a place for us to sleep, but they offered to cook us a meal as well.

After we downed our food, they showed us to our room. It was just that, a room. It only had enough room in the 8 X 8 room for a bed and a small table. But we didn’t care, we were just thankful to have a place to sleep, and to do it with full bellies! However, we had a horrible time sleeping that night! The cats were loud and also starved for space in that small room. The walls were paper thin and other travelers arrived next door in the middle of the night. Finally, the single window in the room had broken blinds. In any normal place, this wouldn’t be a big deal, however, like I’m sure you have heard before, the sun doesn’t set in some places of the world. Well it did set that night, it just never went far enough under the horizon to make it dark. I can’t sleep with the lights on too well! (We’ll post a picture tomorrow of how light it is here at “night”).

Animals we still want to see but have yet to come across include: Doll sheep, stone sheep, mountain goats, a wolf, porcupine, an adult bull moose, an adult caribou, an elk, and a grizzly bear. Obviously, these would also be sweet to see, but we consider ourselves fortunate to have seen the things we have already seen and experienced today.

Day 3

Well, we are currently in Dawson Creek, British Columbia. We have drove a total of 1900 miles, and got 1600 remaining (2 days ahead of schedule!). Today was pretty interesting to say the least.

We saw our first police car today. I was driving while Danielle was sleeping and the cats were going nuts (they actually fought today in the car)... anyway, one of them bit me and I ended up swerving into the left lane unintentionally. Luckily, no one was there, but I looked behind me and there was a van in my new lane about 30 feet behind me. Well, I just about pooped when I realized it was a police officer (if that's what they're called here). Lucky me they had better things on there mind then pulling over an Iowan and they just sped right on by.

Speaking of cats... their hair is EVERYWHERE. On our clothes, all over our car, in our food, in our drinks, on our face, in our mouths... EVERYWHERE! I seriously contemplated shaving both of them at the hotel tonight, but lucky them my shaver broke. However, I accidentally gave Snickers a bath today in the car. The cooler we have his soft food in was stupidly placed on top of all of the luggage. I took a sharp left today and the water dumped from the cooler, all over him while he was asleep in his kennel. Talk about a wake up call!

Today's trip was a lot more scenic then the previous two days. We finally got more hills, mountains, trees, and animals! First off, BUGS. I don't know what kind of bugs Alberta has, but whatever they are, they are at least golf ball sized, multiply by the millions, love getting hit by cars, and are completely filled with yellow concrete that washer fluid can't wipe off. Our windshield was covered!

Somethings we ended up seeing today were countless mule deer, beaver dams, the Canadian Rockies, numerous moose crossing signs, and wild bison. We saw the bison at Elk Island National Forest. It's really a cool place! I wish we had more time to spend an entire day there and no cats so we could have walked the trails. 30 minutes was not enough time to simply drive through the park. There are many walking trails, picnic areas, and wildlife viewing opportunities (moose, elk, and bear too, although we didn't see any). Google it!

Finally, Danielle and I got into another one of our fights tonight. And those that know us well enough, our fights are not serious but they can get physical (FYI we are laughing the entire time). Well we both ended up with battle wounds. DK with a pen mark on her leg that that eventually turned into a gash from too much applied pressure. Me with a cut up lip from a well placed ring smack. Blood and laughter was shed by both.

I'll end this entry with an explaination of the videos. Angel is being a huge pain in the butt on the drive... but she tried her hardest to help out when she can! In the videos, she is 1). giving deep tissues leg massages and 2). cleaning windows!