Saturday, May 7, 2011

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Another good reason to drive 50 mph:  it allows other drivers to vent their pent up anger before they get home…

            Bob promises me that while I am writing he will let me know if we come to a wild animal on the road side… BUT now it’s foggy – will he see it in time?  This morning started with SO MUCH excitement.  As we were leaving the city of Jasper, there was a great big wild animal on the roadside, munching grass – think it must have been an elk – no antlers, so it was female.  That much I know.  BUT I couldn’t get to the camera in time.  Oh, the frustration!  I knew, though, that there would be another opportunity.  And, sure enough, just a little bit further along there was a big male something standing on the other side of the road – I could tell it was male because it had a big rack of furry antlers on its head.  It was just standing there, watching the cars go by.  Again, failure with the camera, even though I was sitting with it poised and ready ;o(  Boo, hiss!  A few more failures after that and we started STALKING!  From a half mile away, we stalked!  We stalked dead trees.  We stalked utility boxes.  We stalked small boulders.  All to no avail…  BUT, once more Bob made me a promise:  with 2000 miles to go, I will have more opportunities to take pictures of wildlife… ;o)

            Well, there were no more opportunities today; but the owner of the RV Park (Charlie Lake RV and Leisure, just north of Fort St. John on the Alaska Highway) says that when we get beyond Fort Nelson (a couple of hundred more miles) the road will be narrow with lots of wildlife – elk, deer, buffalo, and wild horses – “you don’t want to drive after dark,” he said, because of the danger from the animals feeding on the side of the road.  Oh, yes.  Charlie Lake is still frozen, as is most of the land around.  The most plentiful tender new grass is right along the road.

            We had stopped for the day around 1:00 this afternoon – took a nap, ate, decided to go out and get gas.  Then we thought we could just take a little ride.  The long and short of THAT is, we drove another 100 or so miles and are now in our second camp site for tonight.  (There was no point in back-tracking… Since we started out from Big Bend, we have driven 3000 miles.  What’s another 100 miles or so for an afternoon drive?)

On the way here, we drove along a short stretch of the original old Alaska Highway – the one that (Ruthine’s) Uncle Raymond drove a supply truck for when it was being built by the Army during WWII.  The part of the road that we drove along has the historic curved wooden Kiskatinaw River Bridge.  It is a 531-foot long structure – and is the ONLY original timber bridge built along the Alaska Highway back then that is still in use today.  We went across it 3 times taking pictures.  (The road was back in the boonies and there was no traffic except us.)  The deck of the bridge is wooden, too, as is the entire under-structure.

The area we are camped in now was near the site of two large Army construction camps – pyramid tents and Quonset huts – that were erected in the open fields outside of Fort St. John.  Seems the town grew from 200 people to 6000 people with the arrival of the US Army troops and civilian construction engineers in 1942.  Can you imagine!?!