After Banff

We continued north from Banff to Jasper with stops at Peyto Lake and the Athabaska Glacier.  Peyto Lake has that beautiful blue color that comes from the sunlight reflected by the suspended dust particles created by the glacial grinding of rocks.  Athabaska Glacier appears to have receded an additional 1/8 to 1/4 mile from from where it was when I visited there ten years ago.  Jasper town seemed the same as before, a lot less touristy than Banff.  We camped near the aerial tramway and rode a gondola up to the top the next morning for breakfast overlooking Jasper down below.  It was a clear day and we could see all the mountain tops named for the winners of the Victoria Cross, England's highest honor to military heroes of the commonwealth.

 From Jasper we made our way to Grand Prairie for our last chance to visit a Costco and a Walmart before Anchorage.  Travelling west we were finally at the beginning of the famous Alcan Hwy at Dawson Creek.  Saw very few tourists in Dawson Creek, and none at mile "0" of the Alcan.  We got our requisite photos of mile "0" with our trucks in the background and headed off for Alaska. 
Over the next two days we drove up to Watson Lake.  In Ft Nelson there is a museum across the highway from the tourist center that no traveler on the Alcan should miss.  The Ft Nelson Heritage Museum has a great collection of vehicles, machines, 20th century technology, buildings, and much more.  It is pretty hard to describe all the "stuff" that has been collected there.  It's a great history of the area and about civilization in the last 100 years.

 North of Ft Nelson we were finally able to see some wildlife, a black bear, a couple of caribou, and about 40 buffalo, all along side of the road.  There wasn't a lot in Watson Lake, but the signpost forest was very cool, and worth the stop.  People have brought signs from everywhere in the world to hang on the posts. Some are so big you would think it was a special trip, or they had to leave a lot of things behind to get the their signs to Watson Lake.

From Watson Lake we took the Campbell Hwy to the Klondike Hwy.  This was a very remote area and more to our liking, but it did pass by a couple of interesting places along the way.  Ross River was a small First Nation village on the Canol Road, a WWII project to bring oil down from Norman Well to Whitehorse was the reason for the road. The project was abandoned with the war's end and the northern half of the road has gone back to nature. The next small town along the Campbell was Faro.  It was a well maintained town that had survived when the mine, the major employer, had closed down in 1997.  It was more oriented to tourism, hunting and fishing, and seemed like a great place for retirement too. We camped near Ross River on the Lapie gorge which was pretty spectacular white water and falls.

Discussing our schedule to meet Amy at Fairbanks airport on the 18th of August, we decided we had come farther and quicker than anticipated so a change in the itenerary was needed.  We decided to go down the Klondike to Atlin and Skagway rather than north to Inuvik, then come back up to Inuvik 4 or 5 days later. Time in this campground is up and we need to leave will continue in next post.