Cassiar Highway

We've been busy since leaving Alaska. We drove from Fairbanks, Alaska to Chicken, Alaska, and then over to Dawson City. When you are almost to Dawson City you drive on a little free ferry to cross to Yukon River. There isn't a dock or anything, just a ramp on each end of the ferry that you use to drive onto and off the ferry.

Since we had been through this area in 2005 we decided to pretty much express south. We drove about 400 miles a day - which is a lot when driving these two lane roads. We decided to drive the Cassiar Highway rather than the AlCAN, but when we got to the Cassiar we were told it was closed due to forest fires. Well, we actually hit it pretty good with only about 1/2 hour wait - they did convoys to lead us through the fire area. The fire was smoldering on both sides of the road. We then drove to Kinaskan Lake. We pulled into the campground and discovered two square dance couples that we know. We had a great time with them and wound up staying an extra day.

Next we drove to Hyder, Alaska. The big draw here is the bears who come to Fish Creek to eat the spawning salmon. We saw a black bear cross the road just as we were arriving. But, the bear quicky disappeared with his fish into the brush. We drove up to the Salmon Glacier and then came back and had dinner. We went to the bear viewing area that evening and were rewarded with two bears. The first one was a black bear who quickly snatched up a fish and disappeared into the brush. The second bear was a big grizzly sow (Veronica) who came into the stream about 9:15pm. We watched her get a fish take it to the bank and repeat the process several times. We finally had to leave at 10:00pm when they closed the viewing area.

We left Hyder, Alaska and drove to Mt. Robson provincial park just east of Jasper. The next morning we spent two nights in Jasper. We did a bike ride/hike plus another hike to Angel Glacier. We then drove down the Icefields Parkway and spent the night at a very nice camping place called Waterfowl Lakes. We were going to spend a couple do of days in Banff, but it was hard to get an electric spot, so we bagged that idea and drove to Whitefish, Montana. Pictures tomorrow if I can get the darned internet to work on my computer!