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.