North to Alaska…Fort Nelson, BC

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Once you leave Dawson Creek, Milepost 0 on the Alaska Highway and head north, Fort Nelson is an easy day’s drive away and a great place to spend the night. Once in Fort Nelson, be sure to allow enough time to visit the Fort Nelson Heritage Museum.

Right alongside the highway, the main museum building is made of logs and houses a splendid collection of artifacts, including much that was used in building the Alaska Highway. The best part of the museum, though, may not be readily apparent, though. Curator Marl Brown, shown here, lovingly restores antique automobiles, and a large metal building on the museum property houses dozens of them, all in running condition. Here Marl sits at the wheel of an automobile that first drove down a road in 1908–that’s right, this is a 100-year-old car.

Marl himself turned 75 this year, and to celebrate that milestone in his life he figured he’d take his century-old car for a spin. He drove up the Alaska Highway from Fort Nelson, across the Canadian Rockies, to Whitehorse, Yukon…and then drove back in early July. Total round-trip distance was about 1,200 miles.

When you visit the museum, you’ll probably have to ask to see the cars as the building is usually locked. If Marl is around, someone working in the museum will fetch him, and if he has time he will open the doors to one of the finest collections of antique automobiles in North America.

Contact Ron at rdcomm@gci.net to order a copy of his book, Guide to the Alaska Highway.

 

North to Alaska…in northern British Columbia

One of the prettiest wildflowers that grows along the Alaska Highway in both Canada and Alaska is the Indian paintbrush seen here. This bright red splash of color is usually about the diameter of a quarter or a little larger and slightly over an inch-and-a-half tall from where it perches at the top of the stem.

You can find these almost anywhere in roadside ditches, on hillsides or in creek bottoms. Blooms are generally not too close together.

Contact Ron at rdcomm@gci.net for a copy of his book, Guide to the Alaska Highway.

North to Alaska…BaBa Canyon

You won’t nfind this one on any map. In fact, we just sort of blundered into it late one afternoon while we were driving around looking for Stone sheep and caribou to photograph.

A few miles past the summit of the Rockies at the bottom of a long cliff we spotted a road of sorts–two-lane rustic trail might be a better description–leading away from the Alaska Highway. We turned in and were able to drive only a couple of hundred yards at most before we had to stop and turn the car around.

Just as we turned onto this trail, on a slab of rock someone had hand-painted “BaBa Canyon.” Whether that is the real name of this place or not, I don’t know. At any rate, after we drove as far as we could, we turned the car around, parked it and got out to walk a little. There was a foot trail of sorts leading farther away from the highway upstream along a small creek of gin-clear water.

I’d only gone a short distance before I abruptly turned around and headed back to the car for my photography gear. The view ahead of us was stunning, as this picture tries to show. We spent most of the next hour working our cameras trying to make just the right picture. Only then did we head back to the car for a drive back to our motorhome.

Contact Ron at rdcomm@gci.net for information on ordering his book, Guide to the Alaska Highway.

North to Alaska…northern British Columbia

Without fail, one 50-mile stretch of the Alaska Highway has produced more animal sightings than all of the rest of the road combined in our 36 trips up and down the road…and that’s saying quite a lot.

About 400 miles from where the road begins in Dawson Creek, BC, it crosses the Rocky Mountains. Starting just before you get to the summit and extending down the other side toward Muncho Lake, we’ve seen countless caribou and Stone sheep over the years, along with many black bears, a grizzly bear that surprised me one evening when I was out for a walk, and a host of smaller critters. This trip was no exception. Really the only large northern animal we’ve never seen along here is a moose. We see those often at lower elevations.

This young ram, that I photographed without ever leaving my seat behind the steering wheel, had his nose buried in the gravel alongside the road licking up salts and other minerals. This part of the road is actually just a couple of miles north of the summit alongside an exposed cliff that is often literally alive with Stone sheep. Caribou are often see near the top of the cliff and the bottom.

A Stone sheep is similar to a western bighorm in coloration but not nearly as heavyset. It’s body is more delicate like the all-white Dall sheep found in Yukon and Alaska mountain ranges.

Order a copy of Ron’s book, A Guide to the Alaska Highway, by contacting him at rdcomm@gci.net.

North to Alaska…Prince George, British Columbia

On our last day before intercepting the Alaska Highway at Dawson Creek, the dog, as usual, forced me into a morning walk around the campground. Wildflowers were blooming on the edge of the property and I allowed the dog to do her thing while I photographed many of the usual suspects like Indian paintbrush. For me, there is no more pleasant way to spent a morning than being outdoors with a camera in hand.

Then I came to this beautiful flower which I did not recognized and still can’t identify. If anybody out there has an idea of what it might be, please post a comment to the blog. I love the picture, but I would like to be able to identify the flower.

North to Alaska…sunset near Dawson Creek

We only got about 15 miles up the Alaska Highway before we were stopped by Farmington Fairways, a combination golf course and RV park about 15 miles outside of Dawson Creek, British Columbia. We checked in, got set up, and then signed up to play nine holes late in the evening.

Sunsets that can last for hours and slowly evolve into sunrises are some of the really great things about being in the far North. Our late evening golf game was no exception. As the clock eased forward to nearly 10 p.m., the sky became an endless panorama of color, constantly changing as the clouds moved about in the wind. I shot this picture as we were leaving the course.

Get an autographed copy of Ron’s book, Guide to the Alaska Highway, by contacting him at rdcomm@gci.net.

North to Alaska…Hells Gate, British Columbia

One of the special pleasures of driving north from Seattle en route to Alaska is driving through the Fraser River Canyon along Canada Highway 1. This is one of the places you miss in your route if you approach Dawson Creek, BC, the start of the Alaska Highway, from the southeast.

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North to Alaska…Time out for a family reunion

Just about the last thing we “had” to do in the contiguous 48 states before heading into Canada en route to Alaska was attend the annual reunion of my wife’s family at a state campground in Washington. Jennifer’s is a large family; her Dad is one of eight children, seven of whom are still alive. Every year they stage a three-day camping trip with a Saturday picnic about half way between Seattle, Wash., and Portland, Oregon, the two cities where the greatest number of relatives live. This year the venue was Lewis and Clark State Park.

The setting was wonderful, the food was great, especially considering that I cooked a lot of it in terms of the annual sourdough pancake feed and the grill work for the Saturday picnic. Jennifer will claim that the S’mores around the campfire were best, but being someone who dislikes marshmallows intensely, I’m not prepared to comment about that part of the reunion.

At any rate, this picture shows what is best about reunions…family members catching up on all the news. Many of the people pictured here will not communmicate again until next year’s reunion. In one way that’s kind of sad, but in another way it makes for a great couple of days in a campground in the middle of Washington.

North to Alaska…Waconia, Minnesota

We are gradually finding our way west and north as we make stops to renew old friendships and take the time to investigate things we’ve always wanted to see. As for the latter, this red-winged blackbird was a case in point.

For decades I have been intrigued by this particular bird but had never had the opportunity to see one up close. On the recommendation of long-time friends, we pulled into a county park and campground a few miles west of Waconia late one afternoon to spend a few days visiting. To my surprise, red-wings were everywhere, and the park provided a short boardwalk through a swampy area were there were thousands of them. We set up camp, and as the sun began to set, wandered down the boardwalk. The bird shown here was just one of many that struck a pose for my camera.

Spring…and subsequently summer…have been late coming to this part of the country this year, as you can tell from the still-brown reeds in the background of this picture. New growth was just beginning to appear near the surface of the swamp when we visited in mid-June.

On the Trail…Inside Lookout Mountain, Tennessee

This is one of those places that should be on everybody’s short list of places to visit. A big slice of American history was written here at the battle of Lookout Mountain during the Civil War in the fall of 1863, and how often do you get to tour an underground cavern with a huge subterranean waterfall.

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