Teslin, Yukon

Teslin Lake Yukon Campground

Just west of Muckluk Annie's, which is still closed for the season, and which was to be our overnight stopping point.

It's cloudy and raining. All the more remarkable because we've pretty much had wonderful weather since the states. A couple sprinkes of rain from partly sunny skies, and a few showers at night. Sunny, warm days. Yesterday it was 75 when we parked at 8:30 PM.

Somewhere over the past few days we crossed into Pacific time and missed it altogether. We found out when we got to Watson Lake. So we gained another hour.

We've been dry camping most of the time in northern Canada. As a result, our habits have changed. There's no TV stations, so watching TV is out. We've been doing more reading and playing games: Yahtzee, Scrabble, and two person Taboo. We're playing pretty even.

Waiting for the pilot car at the forest fire

The roads have been mostly pretty good. The Banff-Jasper road, through the National Parks was good to very good, with only a few small areas of contruction. Jasper to Grande Prairie was good with some fair areas, bumpy was all, slowed doen to 40-50 mph. Grande Prairie to Laird Hot Springs was good, a few rough spots. Laird to Watson Lake included a section of forest fire that was still being worked on, so we had to follow a pilot car through that area with a couple dozen other vehicles. Fortunately, the pilot car arrive about 2 min after we met the south point, and we didn't wait long. We followed him for about 20 miles, at near highway speeds.

In the fire area, they were mopping up, putting out small localized hot spots. They had placed 1000 gallon pools of water in the ditches by the road every mile or so, and were adding new ones farther north. We spoke to one fireman at a rest stop, and he said it was a big fire, ove 50,000 acres. The souther part was under control, but it was moving northeast. Fortunately, there was little wind and a sprinkling of rain

Laird Hot Springs

We stopped at Laird Hot Springs for an overnight. Nice campground, dry camping, for $19/night. We got a swim in the hot springs, which were about 100 degrees F, and featured a hot waterfall that you could sit under and get a back/shoulder massage. Very relaxing.

After Laird, we worked our way through the Rockies, stopping for lunch next to Muncho Lake. This section of road was much more winding and hilly that before, so we had to slow down somewhat. They were fixing the road around the lake, but the speed limit there is only 30 km/hr anyway, so we didn't lose any time.

In the morning at Laird, I discovered that the left front tire on the Bug was nearly flat. It still had 5 lbs of air in it, so it wasn't a complete blowout. I punped it up and waited a bit, it seemed to be holding. We stopped after 50 miles and it had dropped by 1/3. I pumped it up again and we got a fix-flag aerosol in Watson lake and put some in, and pumped it up again. I checked it again after another 50 mies, and it seems to be holding. We'll keep checking it.

Yesterday's had mostly good roads, with a couple sections of dirt road. The first was about 2 miles, the second about 7 miles. The dirt was good, though, and we were able to maintain speeds of 45-50 mph. Only the dust was an issue, and part of the second one had been watered to keep the dust down. If we encounter more dirt roads today, the rain will keep the dust down, but may turn the road into mud.

The wildlife has been fun to watch. The highest concentrations have been in the Rocky Mountains, both between Banff Jasper and again over the past couple days as we crossed them to the west. We've seen bear, moose, elk, caribou, deer, a porcupine, mountain sheep and goats, and several small flocks of buffalo. And lots of birds.

Mountain Waterfall

I've stopped a few places to get pictures of waterfalls coming out of the mountains. It seems to me that this must be the high water season here, as most of the rivers are at the top of their banks, and a few running over them in places. I wexpect that the warm weather is pushing the snow melt out of the mountains. We've seen some splendid rapids just longing for a raft of some kind to journey down the river.

Thumper has been doing pretty well. She's still dragging her right rear leg just a bit, but Consuelo is goving her meds every moring which I'm sure helps her some. She'd much rather ride in the car than the motorhome, but of course she can't. We get a couple walks in every day, good for both of us.

Internet access has been close to zero. I tried our internet dish in Grande Prairie, and no luck, we're too far north for it. Likewise with Dish TV. The limited internet access may work against me much more than Consuelo, since I'm now confined to my desktop computer for most everything. This morning I'm writing on her computer, since we're minimizing power drain, and my desktop is a power hog. We tripped to a coffee shop in Grand Prairie that had access, but had to share her computer, a most annoying process. We did find that the Visitor Info Center in Dawson Creek had free wifi, and we stopped in the morning there with the RV and both got online for a while.

Last night we got serious with the calendar, looking at the plan for the time until the kids arrive in July.We've been moving to be in Fairbanks by the solstice, June 21, to be as far north as possible on the longest day of the year. Already, it's still light when we got to bed at 11:00 pm. We look at the clock, then out the window and say, "Wow". So far, it hasn't disrupted our sleep. Traveling has been exhausting enough that, for example, yesterday we stopped near Rancheria and I took a 2 hour nap, then slept another 8 hours starting at 11:00 PM. If it works out, I'll try to get a round of golf in at Dawson Creek at midnight.