2019TuktoFtNelson

Well our air travel on this trip has been eventful and not boring.  We left on our Edmonton to Toronto flight just about 20 minutes behind schedule and it was a full flight.  After talking with a seat mate, a  crew of men were Newfoundlanders from McMurray going home to Gander for a visit home.  The whole plane was alive with activity.  The air attendant had to tell one fellow to sit down and stay in his seat.  Then the pilot when he finally pulled out of the boarding bay had to stop the plane and say sit down or else we weren't going to move.  By the end of the flight there was "an incident".  They would not let anyone leave the plane (even though we had less than an hour to get out flight to Ottawa and the Gander fellows had about the same time).  This did not seem to matter to flight or RCMP personnel.  We had to wait for the RCMP to arrive, board the plane and interview airline staff and that took about 40 minutes.  Many tr...

When I booked this trip I tried to check out flights to get home the same day and found that it was not possible.   It was going to take two days to get home, whether I flew from Fort Nelson or did the long drive.   So I thought, I will see more of the country taking the drive and avoid two days of tedious air travel with two flights each day.    So here we are in the van heading south with 1068 km to drive today. Emily, Jill and myself along with Bruce in our bug-splattered van headed out at 5 am in bright sunlight (it does not get dark yet overnight up here) on a virtually empty highway heading south.   We drove  along the highway for hours alone on the highway. We saw several bears on their own and some with little cubs.   There was a moose with a calf right on the highway.   The calf was all legs and looked so young.   We stopped several times to see what birds were about.   These included Common Redpoll, Black capped...

While it was a hot evening last night in Watson Lake, this morning it was fresh and clear with a slight wind.  We packed up for a drive of 550 km today to Fort Nelson, BC. We had a long drive through some of the most fantastic scenery in Canada.  Large vistas of mountains, lakes, forested hills and raging creeks.  We saw 16 Black bears today along the highway.  And sometimes they looked at us looking at them and other times they continued doing what they were doing.   We had bison and fox also. This morning the weather seemed to change every five minutes.  Cool and sunny one time, rainy and blustery the next time we stopped.   I put on my zip up sweater and my down vest for our picnic lunch.   Finally on the way home in the last 160 km, it started warming up and quickly to the low eighties.  I shed my down vest and sweater and long sleeve cotton top and I was fine in a t-shirt. On the drive we saw a Red Fox with a dea...

Our luggage was again expertly packed up and everything fit and we were on the road by 6 am for   Watson Lake.   Goodbye Whitehorse, maybe someday I will come by again and visit the city and its museums.   Today the weather is cool with some high rain clouds in the distance.   Hopefully it will be clear and dry.   It does not take long to get into the vistas of mountains, meadows and lakes.   Stunning scenery!   Today, the highlights of the day were the mammals.  We had at least 6 bears along the highway.  Almost all of the bears looked very healthy and on the chubby side.  Then we stopped for a roadside bathroom break and down in the meadow and ponds were a total of 6 moose!   One male was particularly spectacular as it was feeding in the pond and would submerge itself and then come up like a submarine with water pouring from its rack of antlers.  Everyone watched this for quite a while....

We were on our way to Mount McIntyre at 6 am.   It was a blue sky morning and we were dressed for cool weather.   The day was gorgeous!    The drive up the mountain was truly an adventure.   Washed out roads, and roads so filled with rubble the road looked impassable.   We slowly proceeded up the mountain.    The vistas were spectacular.  The next three photos show the views of the surrounding area around Mount McIntyre.   This is a stretch of "Road" that Tom and Bruce walked first to decide whether we could drive up.  They moved some of the problem rocks and we drove up the road and what goes up must come down and at this stretch we walked down. This is the view of Whitehorse in the distance from the top of Mount McIntyre.  Pretty spectacular. Tom had indicated that there was no guarantee that we could get up to where we hoped to see a Rock Ptarmigan.   It had rained yesterday so the road ...

We packed our day packs today and left the property at 5:30 am.  We headed  out on the Alaska Highway to Haines Pass which is after Haines Junction and we drove along almost to the Alaska border with British Columbia.  This was a stop and go drive of 340 km one way which took about 6 hours with the birding.  Then we had a picnic lunch almost at the turnaround and headed back again with some stops and we were back in Whitehorse after 5 pm. The day was cool and overcast and the rain sprinkled or poured and then in the afternoon it got sunny and glorious in the mountains.  As we headed out on the highway a sort way we saw an Elk on the side of the road and then two beautiful wild horses crossing the highway.  Apparently they really have wild horses here and these were in great shape.  We gave them some room.  One of them went off the highway and back down to the bush but the other horse stood on the side of the roadway for a long time as I ...

We had the morning to walk around Dawson City.  This town is a gem in the Yukon.  It is largely preserved in terms of the old buildings and Front Street is great with anything one could want as a tourist.  The hotels are great looking from the outside and there is a lovely Native Museum in a modern building.  The Yukon River runs along the town.  There were tourists around but it was not crowded.  It is a stunning little tourist town and one could spend two or three days here,  There is a boat tour, various museums to visit and the outdoor patios are nice.  I found out later that there is evening entertainment.  Plus there is the everlasting sunshine for 24 hours.   The sun is always out at this time of year.  This is a paddle boat steamer that is permanently installed on Front Street. Here is an old cabin also on Front Street. Below photo.  This was the view from the Inn we stayed in.  Even the residen...

Well we made it through the 780 km Dempster dirt highway without a flat tire! Each van held a spare tire  and Tom had bought an extra spare for each vehicle as a second back up.  We were so lucky.  There was little rain so the roadway was dry.  Unlucky for us in that there were clouds of dust kicked up by us and anybody passing us.  We saw several bicyclists on the roadway and we don't know how they did it.  In places the gravel is pretty soft so it must be so difficult to ride a bike on a dirt road like that.  Plus what does one do when one sees a roadside bear.    And the bears seem to like to be roadside. We left Eagle Plains Motel at 7:40 this morning with 370 km of dirt road to travel.  One cannot blast down the road.  Often the dirt road is higher than the abutting land and times it is a road on a high cliff.  You can't go too fast on a dirt road either.  So one is lucky to do a steady 50 or 60 km.  ...