The next level...

For those who thought we’d forgotten about the lower 48 now that we’re in the Great North, no, no!  Just so busy enjoying it there has been no time to write!;-)

We were heading into Fairbanks, with plans of just stopping on the way through to check out their renowned museum (at U of A-it was REALLY cool!) and botanical garden, when Jim called JC Barber, a friend through String Cheese who we heard was up here for the summer. (Skaryd/Schurrs will be interested to know he hails from Keene, NH.)  It turns out JC is working near Denali park, but even better he owns land north of Fairbanks and was headed up there that day to work on his place.  Lucky timing and fun for us!  

JC set us up in a nice level camping spot among the beautiful trees at the bottom of his driveway, which goes STRAIGHT up the hill to his cabin.  There is a theme in Alaska that we are discovering… basically, the switchback idea never seemed to catch on up here.  Like when we were hiking on a trail off the Dempster Highway and passed a couple hikers from Switzerland as we were heading down.  We commented how these hills are probably nothing compared to what they are used to and they responded with, “yeah, but in Switzerland, we cut back and forth up the mountain, we don’t go straight up.”  Well, you’re in Alaska now…

So… now set up at JC’s we went to work.  For the next couple days we cut and stacked wood, cleared and piled up debris and worked on two “cabin-improvement” projects. In the process, we met more cool Alaskans. Andy, who flew up to Fairbanks for the day from his place somewhere down on the coast, to help JC with the cabin and Lindsey, JC’s former landlord and all around very cool guy, who let us use his tools, power and driveway to build JC a solid door for the cabin. We also finally got that seat JC has been dreaming about put in the outhouse. Most fun of all, we wandered around the absolutely gorgeous forest in which his place is situated.  So sweet!  It was great hanging out with JC and throwing sticks for his awesome 4-legged buddy, Chowder.  

We left there with plans to hook up with them again in Denali.

But first, we had to check out Chena Hot Springs. Located back in the hills about 60 miles east of Fairbanks, this place has gone through several incarnations since the late 1890s and now has come into the hands of some pretty ecologically mindful people.  They have been developing the use of geothermal energy in several ways on the property including warming greenhouses to grow food for their restaurant, generating power for the whole complex and, believe it or not, cooling a VERY large building that houses an ice sculpture museum and carving studio as well as several “Ice Hotel” rooms (kept at 20*F… brrr!!!!) and a bar that serves Appletinis in carved ice glasses.  

In honor of Uncle Karl we had to go! We managed to preserve the glass long enough to make a few espressotinis of our own in Thumper J.  It was a pretty amazing place, despite it’s full-on resort status and the busses of Japanese tourists who arrived in the afternoons.  Rock Lake, which is the main soaking pond on the site, is pretty big.  The water comes into it at about 165*F and then cools as it flows through the pond so you can find your sweet spot and hang out there.  And even the wildlife like it - a moose came down to the creek running behind the main pool while Susan was in there soaking J.  One of the best parts of this side trip was the perfect little camping spot Jim found off the road on the way out there.  Right beside the crystal clear river, surrounded by woods and only a couple mosquitoes!   It was hard to leave… (Believe us… it is always hard to leave)… but we did.

Because, it turns out, that on Friday, September 4, Keller Williams was playing at a tiny bar in the village just outside Denali Park.  Who would believe it?  What a crazy-fun coincidence and better still because our friend Boogie was working this tour with him.  So we stayed up late and danced away our first night in Denali.  And though we had thought that JC styled us before, we had not seen anything yet!  

JC works for the Denali Education Center, which is a wonderful not-for-profit that does Elderhostel and youth programs on private property just across the river from Denali National Park.  He set us up in a great spot right next to the river with indoor plumbing, hot showers AND wireless internet!  Then he sent us on a great cranberry picking hike one day and a fun mountain bike/blueberry picking ride the next day.  Thanks to Janet, Susan came prepared for the possibility of making jam while we were in Alaska and in fact did make almost a dozen jars of yummy berry jam right here in Thumper.  It was a total mess but they came out great! 

But JC wasn’t done… It turns out he had another friend coming in to check out the D.E.C. for a student trip next year.  He had already been talking to some friends, who live way up in a small valley of private land surrounded by the park, about bringing Tim in, so he went ahead and asked them about getting a pass to drive Thumper up there.

A bit of background here, Denali Park is about 6 MILLION acres of wilderness.  The mountain, formerly known as McKinley ;-), cannot even be seen from the entrance area. In a very wise move, they have disallowed private vehicles more than 30 miles into the park, but provide shuttle busses for the 55 miles of road beyond that.  Many people go for day trips (that can last 8-10 hours!).  People who want to camp further in than their car can go take the bus with their gear.  It’s a pretty good system for balancing preservation of the wilderness and access for people who want to check it out.  So for JC to arrange a pass for our vehicle was a pretty major deal and gave us an opportunity few people have.  And though we knew it was special going in, looking back now we are overwhelmed by the gift we received.

Sunday morning JC brought Tim over to get acquainted, we loaded up their gear and all headed up to the park office early to get the pass.  There was a minute or two of “will this really happen?” (most of you know how the whole ‘List’ thing goes sometimes) but it all went smoothly.  We received the window pass and were informed of the rules-of-the-road inside the park, agreed that we wouldn’t chase any sheep and off we went.  We didn’t drive but a couple miles when there was a cluster of cars and line of cameras mounted on tripods along the road. It turned out a huge bull moose was lounging in the woods less than 100 feet from the road. Amazing!  There was a ranger on site directing traffic and ensuring that no random tourist was going to try and put his 3 year old on the moose’s back to get a picture (yeah… sounds stupid, but…).  

We hung out for a bit and got some great, mostly in-focus pictures of this beautiful animal and then decided to move on down the road.  We pulled away all giddy from this first sighting and got back up to cruising speed (25mph) just in time to see some more cars pulled over and a guy waving at us to stop… so we did.  It took a moment to see what he was looking at but then a Mama Moose and her 2 year old calf (he was MUCH bigger than that sounds!) came ambling across the road about 50 feet in front of us.

I say ‘ambling’ because moose don’t seem to be the most graceful of creatures here and just look as if they are heading a particular direction because the ground happens to be sloped that way.   So we were off to a great start!  Oh and did I mention the weather was perfect?  It had been for 3 or 4 days (we actually saw Denali on the drive from Fairbanks at about 120 miles away).  But this day we got to see it again and again as we would come over a pass or around a bend on the mountain.

I would like to find words to describe the vastness and extraordinary beauty of this place, all decked out in color for autumn and with a fresh coat of snow on the high peaks, but I know there is NO WAY to give you an imagine that can come close.  And pictures… you will see some great ones, but they are still just a glimpse and a pale one at that.  It is hard to believe the wonder of it all even when you are standing right there.

So the 90 mile drive took us about 9 hours, though 3 of that was a wild bush whacking hike along and above the Toklat River looking for bears.  For better or worse, we didn’t see any, but we did find 2 half snow hares and a couple random rabbit feet.  Guess it was a good day to be a predator.  And there were many stops for photos, caribou and Dall sheep on the hilltop, eagles and a falcon.  By the time we rolled into Kantishna Valley we were pretty tired but so excited at the same time.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Chicken

SO what does one do to follow up such an incredible experience? Well, go to the Top of the World, of course! Conveniently located just a ferry ride to the other side of the Yukon river from Dawson City and leading west toward Alaska, the Top of the World highway winds it’s way toward the border for 60 miles or so. Just as we were climbing up to the first ridge, a BIG cat crossed the road and then casually looked back at us as we slowly passed the spot where he went into the brush. Turns out it was a lynx. Soooo beautiful and majestic! If only I’d had the camera ready!   Lesson learned!   Again the drive was so colorful but this time the road was following the tops of the mountains and along ridges.  In the distance there were numerous cloud shrouded mountain ranges visible in every direction.  You could peer deep down canyons with cold blue-green rivers flowing through black spruce forest and follow the change to smaller shrubs and finally tundra as your eye moved up the mountainside.  It really did feel so much like the very top of the world! But then we checked our map and found out the highest point was around 4,500’. Geeze, our place in Clifton is higher than that! Shows you it’s all really perspective…..

We spent the night pulled off on a dirt side road surrounded by gorgeous colors once again. It was like being in another world….Next morning we crossed the border in a truly remote and beautiful spot. The agent we spoke with there described the scene of watching 100,000 caribou migrate over the pass where he works. It sounded so amazing!  But what was even more amazing to us was that we were actually, finally in ALASKA! Yup, only 3 weeks to get through Canada (who knew it would be so big and full of interesting places?) and finally we arrived, greeted by a couple Inushucks high on Davis Dome.

From there we coasted (almost) down along a lovely creek to the little town of Chicken.   Really.  Chicken, Alaska, pop. 130 summer, 2 winter.  It was founded by a couple of miners (they wanted to call it ptarmigan, but couldn’t spell that) who eventually pulled over a ton of gold out of the creek and surrounding area. These days there are still folks mining around here in fact Jim successfully tried his hand at gold panning and in the process met some very interesting people.  Several residents have restored some of the old buildings and one couple created a wonderfully landscaped campground and store/restaurant on an old tailings site.  We had stopped just to check it out, take a few photos and of course acquire a few Chicken mementos for the chicken lovers we know back home, but the place was so sweet and the people so kind we wound up spending the rest of the day and camping out there, too.  While Jim was panning, I took a ride out around “town” (there are maybe 6 buildings and an old, giant dredge spread out over a half mile or so).  Some one had advised me to head out to the airstrip to look for moose (really?) so I did and in fact about 3 minutes after arriving found a young bull feeding in a pond off to the side of the runway. He SO did not care about me being there, just went on munching very contentedly. It was way beyond cool to be able to stand and watch this guy for quite a long time.

We were warned that people often have a hard time leaving Chicken and so it was for us. In the morning we were packed and pretty much ready and the next thing I knew, Jim was over at the panning site with another load of gravel in Dave’s rusty old pan! Guess there really isn’t any blaming him. It’s a pretty cool thing to watch those shiny little flecks of gold appear as the sand washes away.  We did finally manage to get going and make our way back to the pavement of the Alaska Highway a couple hours later.  Turned out to be a week long detour but worth every mile!!!

Arctic Adventuring

Whirlpool Canyon. Wow!  Just a small dirt track off the highway to a set of rapids on the Liard River.  You can’t even see it from the road, but when you walk down though the woods to where the trail opens up an UNBELIEVABLE site greets your eyes. Thousands of logs, full grown trees stripped and throw up onto land by the power of the river, are jammed like giant pickup sticks for 150 yards up an old creek bed and along the jagged rocks that frame this bend of the river. When spring runoff hits the river probably quadruples in size and creates this huge whirlpool that everything gets sucked into.  Humans are completely dwarfed by the scale of this natural sculpture.  Adding an over-the-top component to the scene is the mineralized, vividly colored and layered rock upon which we walked to explore the area. And once again, love was all around as evidenced by the loverocks Jim was able to find.  Hopefully his pictures can give you a hint of what this incredible corner of the Liard River holds.

When we finally pulled ourselves away from Whirlpool Canyon the next morning we headed  to Watson Lake, a SMALL town on the AK Hwy that had the distinction of being a location of one of the military camps supporting the construction of the highway in 1942/43. Apparently one afternoon a homesick soldier added a board to the local sign post indicating the name of, and mileage to, his far away hometown. The idea took hold and the sign post grew to include other distant, longed for places. When the highway was opened to civilian traffic several years later, folks started making and posting signs to their hometowns as they passed through. This “sign post forest” has grown to include over 65,000 signs from all over the world. REALLY.  It’s not like anything you could imagine until you see it!  Of course we stopped only to check it out, but got inspired, made our own little ‘Yobp’ sign with a pie pan and a sharpie, adding it along with our beloved Glacier Brewing Company sign (Susan was really sad to see that pulled off of Thumper) to the crazy forest of other signs. If you ever get up to Watson Lake be sure to look for them….

After all that fun we just rolled along for quite some time (i.e. a few hundred miles) before turning north off the Alaska Highway at Whitehorse to take the side-route through Dawson City (hint, hint for those of you playing “guess the miles” ;-).   Dawson City is on the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon rivers which was the crux of the Klondike gold rush in the late 1890s and prior to that a long standing fish camp of the Native people. It’s a pretty cool, well preserved little town with a wild history.  Jack London was there for a year or so trying his hand at getting rich.  He failed, like so many others, but did get good material for a couple of his well known books.

While hanging out in DC for a couple days we learned that the road up to the Arctic Circle from there is  actually pretty good (for a rain washed, permafrost heaved, dirt and gravel ‘highway’) and so we decided to head up to 66*33’ and check it out. The Dempster highway actually did turn out to be an extraordinary experience. The journey ran through grey, black and red stone mountains, along clear, deep rivers and through autumn colored boreal forest and tundra following a route established by the nomadic First Nations(who followed the caribou migrations for many centuries before anyone else showed up here).  Every couple minutes one or the other of us was pulling out the camera trying to capture the miracle of this place. But forget about it! There is no way to do any of it justice-blazing reds, oranges, golds and yellows sweeping up mountainsides and across the valleys literally hundreds of miles in every direction! All you can really do is thank the universe for the privilege of being witness to it. 

A mere 252 miles of this glory and we arrived at the Arctic Circle, delightfully enough situated on the crest of a rolling hilltop with mind blowing 360’ views of the just described color.  We pulled off the road into a sweet little spot where we could enjoy the scenery. The sun was still not ready to set at 10:00pm so  Jim spent some time taking photos while Susan made a celebratory dinner (local wild harvest morel mushrooms J).  We were just ear to ear smiles, reveling in the amazing beauty and awesome day, not expecting anything else too extraordinary would happen….  Then Jim went out the back door to grab something from the cab of the truck and about ran into a grizzly bear that had come up to explore our camp!  Needless to say, Jim backed in pretty quickly, grabbed the camera and we spent the next several minutes trying to get a good look at Mr. Bear while the light faded from the sky.

We had been hoping to spend the night outside watching   for the aurora borealis, which starts getting visible again this time of year, but between the bear and a light rain that started falling, we just finished the wine and went to bed. In the morning Jim went out to see if he could find bear tracks in the mud. And boy, did he! Not the biggest bear tracks ever, but lots of them all around behind the camper and on down the road. It looked as if our friend came back around later, too. And to answer the often asked question “Does a bear poop in the woods?” the answer is “No. He poops in the middle of the road” and having first observed a very clear example on this misty morning, we have now seen supporting evidence on several other occasions. Pretty clear what bears think of humans driving through their territory!

But Bear was not our only visitor. VERY big, clear paw prints in front of the truck reveled a wolf had also checked out our camp during the wee hours. Just a short distance up the road we found deep hoof prints indicating a large caribou came through as well.  Never have I been so appreciative of Thumper’s indoor plumbing than I was that morning realizing all the critters I might have met in a middle of the night trip outside!

One other cool find on this part of the journey was the existence of Inushucks. These stacked rock sculptures are rather human shaped and are traditional “greeters” to travelers in these ancient lands.   On the dome above the highest pass on the Dempster we found several such guardians who lent a very sacred feel to their windswept mountain top. We were, again, overwhelmed by the gratitude we feel in being able to experience such rare and amazing beauty.  On the way out we channeled our dear friend Dave and created an Inushuck lower down, next to a pull out, to greet other lucky travelers- it got a nice set of loverocks to go with it, too!

And just because the universe is so kind, coming down a hill in the last couple miles before the turnoff back to Dawson, we found two fox kits playing in the middle of the road. They ran and hid as we went by but then jumped right back out and went to investigate the car that came after us. We watched them play and wrestle for a bit before running off into the brush again. This time, we actually got a picture!

 

Sunday, August 23rd

Prophet Springs (MP222) to Whirlpool Canyon (MP557)

 

Ok… so here it is Sunday and we are still heading north on the Alaskan Highway.  We spent the night around Milepost (MP) 250 and headed out with an actual goal today!  We were heading for Liard Hot Springs a mere couple hours drive away.  The road keeps changing from dirt to gravel back to asphalt back to dirt into asphalt and once again gravel… and then doing it all over again.  Kinda keeps you on your toes when you’re driving.  The visitor’s guide to Canada states “don’t be afraid to drive on the best part of the road.”  So far, I think it’s about 50/50 as to which side of the road we are driving on…

We keep one eye on the road and the other eye along the road looking for that every-evasive Moose.   We did manage to see a Porcupine scurrying off the road into the shrubs… and a couple Stone Sheep lounging along the road.  Then, as we came around a bend in the road… there’s this adolescent Caribou just taking his morning jog down the middle of the road!  He is just lumbering along in his awkward manner about 20 feet in front of the truck… and he wouldn’t move out of the way.  Sure, he would look left and then right like he was going to get off the road and do some trail running but he just stayed right there in our lane.  It was pretty cool seeing him there so we just drafted him for a while until he had enough running on the asphalt and got off to the shoulder.  We just sat there laughing at the whole thing not quite believing what we just saw.  It must have been that day when all the teenage Caribou skip the weekly herd meeting as we had just got back up to speed when we came across another one just off the side of the road trying to figure out how to get across the guardrail.  Next turn and there’s a whole group of mamas and their little ones. NOW we’re talking!  We were getting all excited about the wildlife and talking about how different it is to have Moose, Caribou, Sheep, Grizzlies, Wolves and the like as your everyday local animals.

We pulled into Liard Hot Springs about 4:30pm all giddy from the drive and decided to soak then go and get a few more miles behind us before dark.  These hot springs are back in the woods and you access them via a boardwalk built over the wetlands.  The walk back was beautiful and we read a couple information boards along the way.  It turns out that due to the microclimate created by the hot springs there are 14 varieties of Orchids living there.  It was like a tropical forest really….(boreal, actually) The springs were semi-improved with stairs into the water and benches in and around it with just a small  changing room.  The water came out of the ground at like 136*F and fell down this nice waterfall into the main pool where it mixed with ground water to cool it down nicely.  You could get in at one end where the water was like 104*F and slowly work your way towards to hot end… and get this… it was too hot even for Susan!  Not THAT’s saying a lot about how hot it was.  The water fell over another falls into a cooler pool which was more my temperature.  We hung out there for about an hour and a half… some of which was spent helping a lady try and find her wedding ring that had come off in the water… bummer… no luck.

So… north we go again… this time with a warning to watch out for the Buffalo.  Buffalo?... if you say so.  It was about 6:30  and we did want to be off the road by dark so we had a target of Whirlpool Canyon about 50 miles ahead.  All refreshed, we headed out… road was good, weather was clear and traffic was non-existent.  Much to our amazement, it didn’t take us too long to come upon a Buffalo lying down on the hillside along the road.   He was beautiful… just hanging out there.  We were still excited about our Buffalo sighting when we went around a bend and came upon an entire herd of Buffalo taking up the entire road!   There were probably 50 or 60 of them there… from little calves to the Big Daddy Pappa Grand Puba Bull!  In fact, Mister Puba was walking right towards us and not looking like he was going to change his course.  We had pulled over to the side of the road and stopped and just sat there watching Daddy come at us and at this point Susan says, “maybe we should go.”  But I couldn’t go anywhere with that many Buffalo around and Puba polishing our front fender.  He came walking right beside the truck… Susan’s window open… his shoulder almost touching our mirror and his shoulder higher than Susan’s head!  Absolutely amazing!  We just sat there in awe of the size and beauty of these animals as the big ones walked slowly by and the little ones ran and hid behind their mothers.  Simply incredible… no other way to describe it.  We did manage to get a couple blurry pictures.

The last couple miles to our camp were filled with “did you see that?” and “Holy #%&#!”.  We made it to Whirlpool and backed into a spot…

 

But that’s another story……

Miracle of America revisited....

Just a quick note on that “Miracle of America Museum” in Polson, Montana… Look it up!  See if it is on the internet somewhere.  It should be!  It is one of those places that you see along side the road and just keep driving.  Nothing to really draw you in and spend time there exploring.  The front facing the road is a simple building with “MUSEUM” on it in big letters.  There is the typical old army vehicle out front… along with a battered helicopter and your typical huge wooden tug-boat type thing and a couple old cars.  You step inside and are lost for hours!  I mean like you can’t take it all in without literally going on overload.  I left there after 3 hours or so feeling like I had motion sickness.  For 3 hours my eyes were in constant motion moving from this 1930’s hair curling machine to that Japanese Rising Sun Flag from WWII signed by the troops before battle to the 1912 Harley Davidson shaft drive motorcycle of which only 1000 were ever made to the interlocked antlers of two bucks that died because they couldn’t get apart from each other and subsequently died due to starvation!    There were 37 buildings ‘out back’ that were  stocked up as a blacksmith shops, a doctors’  office, milking barn, schoolhouse, grainery, trappers shack or general store.  There was a barn full of oddball antique cars and bikes.  And one full of steam engine tractors.  There was something everywhere and more behind that.  It wasn’t arranged like a typical museum… no that would make too much sense.  Instead, it was arranged by theme, each room or part of a room dedicated to a particular subject… but in no particular order.  It went from early 1900’s household goods to WWII to old motorcycles to Boyscouts then to vintage lunchboxes and Wizard of Oz statues of a flying monkey.  We could not believe that all of this “stuff” was there… and why it was not in some major museum somewhere else.  There was no way you could get through that place in one day and really take in what you saw.   No way to truly comprehend the vastness of Gil’s collection (Gil is the founder).  I know we all have a collection disorder of one type or another but Gil has taken all of our disorders and arranged them all in one place.  As he put it… “This is not my job, it’s a hobby gone wrong.”

 

Photos won’t really do this place justice but I will put some here anyway.  And as Susan said… if you ever find yourself in Polson, Montana you HAVE to stop by and see this amazing place.

North to Alaska

August 22, 2009

And so we begin our first day officially on the Alaskan Highway.  We camped last night at MilePost 29 at the Kiskitanaw Provincial Campground.  We met the camp… host… I guess you could say, but Alex was much more than a simple “host”.  He comes there in April or May and stays until October and really takes care of the park.  “This is my park” he told us… not in a possessive or arrogant way, but in a proud way.  He walked around the park about 10pm with his dog ‘Moose’ (an aptly named Lab/Rottweiler mix of about 125 pounds) and stopped in for a chat.  He liked our solar LED Christmas lights we had strung up on one of the smaller spruce trees in our camp.  He stayed and chatted for a while before moving on.  We are pretty deep into Canada at this point and I knew the “eh’s” would start popping up… and they have… pretty much after every other sentence.  It’s the little things that ya just seem to notice, eh?  Alex left us with a new map, his business card so we could look him up next time we were in the area and a word of advise… “Watch out for the moose, eh?”

We left right on time… 10:12am again this morning.  Been really trying to beat our record of 9-something but just can’t do it.

We made it about ¼ mile from our camp before we hade to make our first stop of the day.  No, the road wasn’t THAT bad!  The last remaining bridge still in use today from the original Alaskan Highway built in 1942 was right in our path.  It is made entirely of wood similar to railroad trestles and cool thing about it is that is curves about 7-degrees as it crosses the river 150’ below.  Of course we got a picture of Thumper on it.

Not much further up the road, we passed this big sign that said “Honey”.  Did someone say Honey?... having not seen the sign till it was too late we made a U-turn and headed back.  There we met Mr. Van Han, who was now retired and, by all means, out-of-business… that is until we showed up.  He pulled his John Deere tractor (the big kind) right up behind us and got the key to the door of the shop off the telephone pole and in we went.  We got a whole lesson on bees and honey and plowing snow on the Alaskan Highway.  So, we got our standard 15-pound drum of honey and headed on down the road, spoon in hand, scooping and savoring the new treat.  One thing before you go though… “Watch out for those moose, eh?.”

We keep Aunt Alvina’s trip journal close so we can read about what they did and saw as they traveled this road.  One of our goals was to stop at the gas station at MilePost 136 where Grandma & Grandpa knew the owners, the Warrens, from their previous trip to Alaska and spent a night there during their trip in 1974.  We did find the station, still with the campground behind it, but the Warrens were gone and the folks there now didn’t know much about them.  Still, it was neat to be there.

Now… we are really making good time!  That is until we pulled into Saint John where there was a farmers market… and a yard sale… and diesel fuel… and a sporting goods store… and this guy making wooden signs… and… let’s just say we were there for longer than we planned.

We are now camped at this de-commissioned Provincial campground at Prophet River where Aunt Alvina and crew stopped and got some spring water… and so did we.  Nice to know that they were in this same place drinking from the same spring a mere 35 years ago.

 

Oh… and for you keeping track at home… we have seen… 6 Whitetail Deer, 29 Chipmunks, 4 Bald Eagles, 1,467 Crows and one small dog…

But NO Moose!

 

 

Oh, Canada!

Hmmm, where’d we leave off?  Flathead lake it seems, saying good bye to Chrissy and Dave with a case of their yummy beer in back (thanks again!) and a pile of  Glacier Brewery stickers to liberally distribute. We are now official ambassadors!

For those of you keeping track that would have been Sunday August 16. We headed up to Polebridge, MT-almost the end of the road, 24 miles from Canada, but you can’t get there from here. It's on the west side of glacier National Park. Our  only reason for going was because when Chrissy described it, she said the first thing they thought upon seeing the place was how much Jim would love it J And they know him well! It’s a collection of wood cabins on a creek in the mountains, closed off to anyone without a snowmobile or the ability to cross country ski distance for 6 months of the year. When we pulled up to the Polebridge Mercantile (circa 1900) there was a jam band on the stage out back of the bar next door and more than a few folks who looked like, well, our friends. It could have been State Bridge (minus the river and the train). Unfortunately the guy who owns the Northern Lights Bar forgot to renew his liquor license...  oh well, the mercantile sells beer (and REALLY amazing, creative scones,  like feta/olive/onion-we shared 3 for dinner!). That night we camped at the most beautiful river rock beach ever!  EVER! Greens and purples and red and grays and browns, smooth and lovely.  We wandered about for several hours before dark (have we mentioned it gets dark late here?)  finding  6 or 7 LOVErock sets almost without trying. It was so amazing, peaceful and hard to leave…..

But we did, and spent the next day driving around Glacier (being too long for the Going-to–the-Sun road) but happy as there was no traffic and spectacular views of mountains and forest (some of which had burned in the past couple years, leading to a cool, unexpected way of seeing the landscape and crazy amounts of wildflowers).  We took a much needed hike around Two Medicines lake, almost seeing a moose and perhaps several beavers (their home was in evidence) before heading up to Many Glaciers campground, where we were turned away(!) for having arrived so much later than all the other campers. Oh well. The drive was glorious, heading into the valley between spectacular, sharp cut mountains along a green/blue cascading river of glacial runoff as storm clouds gathered around the peaks.

So into Canada we went on Tuesday, without so much as a “we’ll be searching your trailer now”, and up through Glacier/Waterton International Peace Park (which Glacier National Park evolved into in 1932 celebrating the longest ‘undefended’ border in the world). It was a gentle transition into this new world, still espresso shops all along the way (I forgot to mention that Montana has the most coffee huts per capita of anywhere on earth, much to my delight), Safeways, Walmarts and Home Depots. What they did have which we’d never seen before, was a town (Frank) that was covered in rocks (big rocks) after the side of a mountain gave way. Devastating, of course, but so amazing, too. Perhaps Mother Nature's way of protesting all the mining going on around there.

Next day we made our way up to Banff National park, hiking around Lake Louise and up toward the glacier that feeds it. This is a place I remember visiting as a kid. We were loving the clear blue water and the beautiful forest that surrounds it rising up, seemly straight up in places, to cover the mountains. 

The road running through Banff and into Jasper is counted as “one of the ten most beautiful drives in the world” and we believe it! Cruising along between the majestic peaks is pretty amazing, but then you start getting to the glaciers and Oh my! Just incredible walls of ice and snow hanging off sculpted peaks. They figure every person in North America could stand together on the Columbia icefield and still have room. Wow!  Lakes and rivers of unbelievable blue and green (and sometimes white) runoff carving rock canyons like I’ve never seen. Panther falls (unmarked, which we found only though because a kind someone encouraged us to follow a trail off a turn out) jumps straight out of a hole in the side of the mountain after winding it’s way through deep carved rock channels up above! It’s ridiculous, really. And based on Janet and Karl’s word, we ain’t seen nothing yet! :-)