We're on a boat

After a relaxing few days in the very small town of Prince Rupert, we were ready to set sail on the Alaska Marine Highway which takes a route through the stunning Inside Passage all the way north to the seaside towns of the Alaskan coast. The trip was spread out over three days which included one night on the boat, a night in the capital of Alaska (Juneau) before taking us to our destination - the port of Haines, which gave us access to the great north.

Before any of this great adventure could begin, all vehicles had to check in so they could measure the cars and make sure we would fit on board! we had to go through customs too as we were heading back to the US. we had to eat all our fresh fruit and veg before we were allowed to cross the border but the crossing went a lot smoother than our previous crossings! When it was time to board we lined up for about four hours and did not actually getonto the vessel until 10 minutes before the departure time! The ferry service was the sole vehicular access to some of the small island communities in the passage and this attracted a bunch of interesting characters aboard (including the little family of 14 from the campsite in Prince Rupert which we had nicknamed "The Wild Thornberries" as they had one child which looked totally different to the rest of the gang) which added to the many tourists doing similar trips to our own (quite a few oldies in their RV's and old blokes on motorbikes).

The first leg of the trip was a 27 hour voyage from Prince Rupert to Juneau; there were a few stops along the way so we had to figure out what we needed to take upstairs as we were not allowed in the vehicle deck while sailing! With an assortment of clothes, sleeping gear and food we searched the vessel for the best hangout area of which there were lots! There was the indoor front viewing deck, bar, cafeteria, reclining lounge, outdoor viewing deck and solarium; we set up camp in the back viewing deck which seemed to be the best location, pulled up a couple of deck chairs and had a nice little relax before eventually spending the night on the top deck to enjoy the night sky =)

Motoring through some of the most amazing scenery we saw some great landscapes, glassy waters, fishing boats, sunsets, sunrises, glaciers, tiny little light-houses on tiny little islands, dolphins, grey whales, hump back whales, bald eagles, black bears and unfortunately no orcas (killer whales).

Juneau itself was a rather small city for the capital of a state with about 30,000 permanent residents which seemed to be fuelled by both the tourism and fishing industries. We only had 1 night to spend in town so we made the most of our time by first visiting one of the glaciers which was visible from the cruise into port. The glacier was massive, however due to the warming climate has been receding and the wear marks against the rock faces shows just the extent. Since the prevailing wind in the valley below comes from above the glacier, the temperature in the area is generally 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the town; it was amazing to be able to experience the sheer size. After watching a few bears, killing a lot of mozzies and checking out the ice bergs in the area We drove back to the main part of town and treated ourselves to some freshly cooked salmon in one of the ocean frontage restaurants, a real treat compared to the meals we had been preparing almost entirely from canned goods.

Amongst all the sight seeing, we had plenty of other time to fill on board which we managed to do with some of our newly found activities. There is of course many card games (which I am currently on top of the leader board with Emma a close second!), puzzles, drawing, playing with photos from the trip and of course catching up with our blogging!

The final morning of our Inside Passage leg of the trip provided us with a brief display of the massive bald eagles congregating near the fishing jetties as they searched for food scraps before the morning bustle began. These are some absolutely massive birds and probably our favourite animal from the trip. From Juneau it was a short ride up to our destination, the city of Haines where we would begin the final portion of our massive road trip.

There are definitely plans to come back to this amazing place and do a real cruise into the famous Glacier Bay one day in the future!

Baby you can drive my car

Our next item on the itinerary was the Alaska Marine Highway; but before we could get onto the ferry we had a solid 1200km to drive to get there - from Jasper (Alberta) to Prince Rupert (British Colombia coast).  

By the time we left Jasper we had already ticked off quite a few of the animals from our Bingo cards, however we were still yet to see a moose, grizzly bear, or bald eagle. Along the side of the highway we were encouraged by the signs noting to drive cautiously due to moose activity (and these were signposted almost the full distance along the road) however we didn't end up finding any which resulted in us inventing new lyrics to the songs we were listening to which basically went along the lines of "moosey moosey moosey, where are you!" with a number of variations... at least we were entertained the whole way there! 

The animals we were lucky enough to see included a grizzly, plenty of black bears (including some with little cubs!) and I even spotted a wolf crossing the highway, which is quite the spot of luck!

Prince George is a nice town and was located central to our travel path so we ended up spending the night. Before setting up we managed to fit in a few little excursions with some frisbee, views of the town from a great little park where we had our dinner and the local pet store where we entertained the idea of buying a fuzzy little friend and figuring out where to fit it in the car like all the other RV owners we have been seeing! This is also the town where we were introduced to the population of bugs which resides in Canda during the summer time... with a small park which was almost completely covered in caterpillars and the even less popular mossies.

There was quite a lot of roadworks between Prince George and Prince Rupert since access to doing maintenance and upgrades is made difficult by the amount of snow which falls during the winter which lengthened our time in the car slightly! Road constructions are done differently over here to say the least... Instead of opening up small sections of the road, they tend to open the full length up which creates a massive dust storm the entire length, we still havnt figured out why they do it in this way! The longest stretch of work we saw was 16km in which we had to be led by a pilot car as the dust was so bad.

We finally found ourselves in Prince Rupert, the little seaside town which from which we would commence our Alaskan adventure. We explored the port, local shops and even splashed out and purchased some real coffees (although they were not quite up to scratch in comparison to the store from Jasper). There were a couple of memorable quotes from our afternoon, one when we walked into the liquor store and Emma was asked for her two pieces of ID which was followed with " it's just the way she is" and then there was the lady at the health food shop which we saw purchasing some baked goods; when the employee picked up the gluten free goods she exclaimed with disgust "oh no! I want the ones WITH gluten". 

Unfortunately we were not able to find a suitable place to free camp and ended up heading across town to the cheaper campground which it turned out was a win as we found it came with free wifi... there were also a few interesting families to keep us entertained.

First there was the family of 14 (that's no typo!) from Alaska that was moving home from their previous town in north Alaska which goes from one extreme to the other with months of full darkness followed by months of full sunlight. I guess it makes them go a little crazy up there; and there is NO guessing required to figure out what they do during the dark months is there! 

Then there was the couple which had set up their RV which was inherited from a relative and they just planned to stay there in the campsite for 3months. Not entirely sure what they did by day.... but there didn't seem to be a whole lot to do in town, and the mosquitoes were bad as there was a pond right next to their spot! 

Ain't no mountain high enough

The drive from Calgary to Banff was bleak; to say the least... looking ahead you could see the base of the Rocky Mountains with some rather large black clouds filling in around them, meanwhile in the rear view mirror it looked like sunshine and clear skies! It felt like we were heading in the wrong direction! 

We made it to Banff though and the rain ceased long enough for us to enter the visitor centre where the elderly ranger underestimated our hiking abilities and recommended we do all the green level beginner hikes and stick to the trails around town! We had other plans though and hit the harder higher elevation trails in attempt to find the views!! We were limited though as a lot of the higher elevation trails with the good views were still snow affected..typical..  Hiking in the Rockies, similar to Whistler we found out and a lot of the north Americas, is really limited to the true summer time from July to September. 

Between unpredicted rain showers we managed to get in a few good hikes around Banff and managed to see some pretty good sites. We also started to enjoy the extended sun hours and started one of our hikes off at about 530pm, returning to the car at about 8pm to full sunlight! It seemed like a treat at the time but is something we later found we were going to get a lot of!

 After Banff we headed to Lake Louise, which is still within the Banff National Park. The goal here was to capture some impressive reflection shots in the lake. Unfortunately the weather had other plans for us though as we woke on the first morning to rain and clouds. Once again a lot of the higher altitude hikes we had read about and been recommended were snowed out, but we persisted with our first hike up to Lake Agnes. The walk took us up to a little tea house, a reflective lake (conveniently named 'mirror lake' like all the others we had been to in the US) and a few water falls. The clouds moved on as we reached the top so we were able to get some cool photos but as we made our descent to the parking lot they closed back in again. 

Being a weatherman in the Rockies would be a very difficult job, with the mountains causing havoc to predictions and therefore leading to very unreliable weather reports in the morning! We decided not to bother with checking the weather reports and just went with what the day brought us.

The following day we woke early in an attempt to capture some cool shots of the sun rising over Lake Louise, but typically we woke to rain so decided to stay in bed. When we finally did rise, it was still cloudy and miserable but we were determined not to let it spoil our day. We hiked the 'trail of six glaciers' hike at Lake Louise, which was a fun little hike that took us through lots of snow, along ridges, through waterfalls and up to, yet again, another tea house. We reached the top and it started to rain a little but the wallet had been left in the car so we weren’t able to warm up with a nice little cup of coffee. All was not lost though and after the rain ceased a little bit, we donned our rain jackets, gloves, rain coats for our backpacks and the trusty beanies, and made our way to the base. While we weren't able to capture the photos of the area that we had been hoping to, we still managed to have an awesome time and get in a few good, challenging and definitely different hikes in. 

It was then onto Jasper National Park. We arrived late in the afternoon and checked into the largest camp site ever seen. There were 780 sites split up into 67 loops lettered from A to, in some cases O. It was quite ridiculous and while the campsite wasn't full we were allocated a site between 2 families with young children. The camp site had showers and it was another nice treat to feel clean again. 

We were starting to notice big differences between the Canadian and US National Parks. Firstly was the development. In Canada development restrictions were pretty loose and as long as you were providing a service to the tourism, you were able to purchase land and build, this meant the central villages were a lot larger, there were plenty more gift shops and even tea houses at the top of some of the mountainous hikes. In the US, they had very tight restrictions for future development once an area had become a national park in order to preserve the wilderness; definitely the approach we are in favour of! After the development was the entry fees; In the US entry was per vehicle and passes lasted for 7 days. In Canada it was per person, per day... it didn’t end up working in our favour as well as it had in the US! Finally, were the camp sites. In Canada the price for a site was a bit more than in the US and then there was an additional fee for a permit to allow you to make a fire. They did have hot showers though so we just went without a fire!

The weather wasn't on our side the day we got into Jasper and we kind of felt like we had been walking solidly for the past few days so decided to do something different and go for a horse ride! After finding a hidden secret in Jasper town, a little organic vegan cafe and fuelling up on the most amazing real coffees we had had since leaving Australia we met our new friends, Bob and Punchy. They took us through the bushes, alongside a few of the picturesque lakes (which would have looked much more impressive if the sun was out) and through some areas that were closed due to bear activity. Unfortunately we didn’t see any bears but saw lots of elk (one of which followed us for some time along the trail!), deer’s, squirrels and a couple of osprey that had set up house at the top of a light pole. It was nice to do something different and I felt like a kid again being back up on a horse!

After narrowly avoiding rain on our horse ride, we headed out to the Miette Hot springs for a soak in the hot pools and an evening at the Pocahontas camp ground!  The water was from natural hot springs but was cooled with town water and treated before making its way into the concrete baths. It wasn’t as natural as some of the springs we had been to in NZ but the warm water (and of course the shower after it all) was well worth it!

We had hoped for some more hiking and site seeing the next day but once again the weather was against us and the sun didn’t come out until later in the afternoon after wed done all our exploring. We did see some pretty cool scenery, some (would be) picturesque lakes and a bear up a tree!

Jacque, one of the girls I had worked with at the Salomon store in Whistler over the winter had just moved to Jasper so we caught up with her for a drink and were made very jealous by all the adventures she had had in Whistler last summer. We left with the summer goal to do as much hiking as possible and concur Black Tusk; a rather large rock structure on the top of one of the mountains visible from Whistler village.  Jacque also showed us the nightlife in Jasper and we ended the evening at a fundraising event where 3 of the local (straight) guys were dolled up by the local hairdressers and then danced and lip synced to some provocative songs pretending to be the opposite sex. It was quite funny and well attended, with just about the entire town crammed into the little pub.

Just before leaving Jasper we treated ourselves to breakfast out at our new little favourite coffee shop before hitting the road for another big day of driving.

Take a walk on the wild side

Before leaving the US we hoped to stock up on some camping supplies with Emma in need of a new day bag and me looking for a more travel friendly jumper, so we made a stop in the state capital of Montanna... Helena. Being the state capital, I guess we were expecting a little more than what we got. With a random assortment of outdoor adventure (which was just hunting and fishing stores) and large chain stores we emerged slightly unsuccessful a couple of hours later and continued on our way to Glacier National Park. 

Upon arrival we were once again surprised by the amount of remaining snow around the place and we are now talking about the month of June! Not only were a lot of the amazing walks not open, the main road through the park was still closed, so our options were limited. One of the hikes which was mentioned in the brochures we were reading was one which crossed the border between the US and Canada which would have been a great little story to have.

We did actually manage to do a few activities during our stay. We did play with some photos of the stars, enjoyed some amazing views of the lakes with mountains beyond, saw some more animals up close as they walked along the trail and continued our quest for the perfect s'mores.

One of the things which has been great about cruising through the US is the campsite facilities available which are perfectly suited to short term stays and are ideal for the travelling we are doing. Every site gets a picnic table, fire pit and in areas with high bear activity there is food storage bins which means there is plenty of room in Jimmy for sleeping and hanging out =)

A milestone was reached during our stay in Glacier and our friend Jimmy reached his 10,000th Km with us! We have done a few more than our google maps estimate at the start of the trip, but no matter and no time to ponder... It's time to head back up into Canada!

There goes another day

We were really looking forward to getting back to Canada, I don't know what it was though..maybe it was really starting to feel like home! After a breezy border crossing (although with no stamp in our passport to prove it) we cruised up the highway to Calgary. The highways were noticeably smaller than those in the us and the signage wasn't as friendly and there were significantly less services along the way! It was a lot greener though and the sky was blue and the sun was shining, something it felt as though we hasn't seen in a few days!

 We arrived in Calgary and weren't really sure what to do with ourselves so started the usual routine, threw on multiple loads of washing, connected to the wifi, charged our electronic devices and chilled out! We treated ourselves to a motel room with a kitchenette this time so made sure to totally utilise the facilities and feasted on steak, salmon and vegetables that hadn't come out of a can!!

We were in a city so a city tour was in order and owing to my failure at finding a day bag in the big ol city of Helena, this was our first mission. After working out the public transport and waiting o the side of a very dirty highway for about an hour we finally made it into town and within about half an hour found ourselves in Starbucks..typical! We sat out an afternoon storm before having success with a backpack in a camping store! We received a $20 gift card for making the purchase so spent about an extra 30minutes trying to find something else to buy!! Always fun..

We strolled along a river and through the park, played on the swings and then found ourselves in a sports bar watching some rugby union! Finally a game that I could kind of follow!! 

After  our city tour we were lost for things to do so Spent our last day in Calgary preparing ourselves for the next leg of the trip. Jimmy got a wash, we stocked up at Walmart (and found out that the Canadian arm of the brand is nothing compared to the American), Rhys cut his hair (and his new facial growth) and of course we found time to play some frisby!

We left Calgary fresh, recharged and ready to head back into the wilderness. We had also learned that Canada was not as traveler friendly as America with grocery and gas prices almost double and liquor not being readily available in gas stations!

Do you want to take a picture

Just north of the Grand Tetons is the famous Yellowstone National Park which was the next port of call for the trip. The park is basically split into three attractions; the thermally active, wildlife and water features. Luckily for us our new friend at the information centre had a set of highlighters and we walked away with a beautiful colour coded map including all shower locations in the park.

The thermal zones are by far the main attraction of the park and this is where we headed first. The 'Old Faithful' geyser is an impressive water spout which fires every 90 minutes or so, day and night and attracts a massive crowd to each viewing. The geyser in true US style has a buildup where you get a taste of what is to come with a few feet of water which then settles before the full force shoots through and water is shot something like 15 metres into the air! 

There was little time to waste with the thermal zone as we we much more excited to go see some wildlife. Unfortunately our beloved Bison were the main attraction in the park which we had previously had a large serving of and were hopeful to see some of the rarer beasts! After cruising around the park searching we were able to find ourselves a nice big male Elk with the giant antlers and a black bear with her cubs. Unfortunately we were not lucky enough to see any wolves, grizzly's or moose... But there is plenty of other adventures to go so fingers are crossed!

The weather was quite chilly throughout our visit  (with some periods of light snow/ sleet!), so for lunch we found some shelter at laundromat where we came across an amazing and unexpected time filler. There was a jigsaw puzzle! Not just your regular puzzle either; this one was a 3 D puzzle which when completed resembled a pyramid. There also was no picture of what we were creating and a few pieces were missing which made our task a little harder than it needed to be, never the less we soldiered through, conquered the puzzle and walked out as the first visitors to actually sit down and complet it! One of the staff there was somewhat of a puzzle enthusiast and told us about the largest one in the world which is 24000 pieces, comes in 6 bags of 4000 pieces and when completed constructs a massive piece of art which would be an impressive wall feature!

Our final night at Yellowstone was in a campground not too far from the main road north and we were lucky enough to have some free entertainment as we prepared our dinner. The area around and including the campground itself was home to a group of elk which had recently been calving. Now throughout our visit at the park, all signs and instructions noted that if an animal was spotted, visitors were not to approach as they can become quite agrevated at times; this was especially the case for the elk in question! As the visitors made their way along the road to exit the park, they of course noticed the elk, pull over and get out of the vehicles to get closer for a better picture. We then got to watch a series of chases where the people were chased by the elk across the road and back to their vehicles. In one case a lady ended up jumping into somebody elses car when she was unable to make it back to her own! Nobody was hurt but it definitely seemed like there was potential and hopefully they learnt a lesson.

After our stay in Yellowstone we were looking forward to escaping the tourist masses and heading to some more remote areas.

We're going to jackson

With the Great Salt Lake in the rear view mirror we had a nice little drive ahead to get to The Grand Tetons! The drive was extended by none other than our good friend... Mr Roadworks. We were slowed by an hour or so, but that didn't matter as we were stopped in a rather picturesque location, especially for a geologist; with the canyons showing off the many layers of rock and folds!

After hitting speed again we were back onto the windy mountainous highways on our way to Jackson, of course while listening to the Johnnie Cash classic (and then later learning that He was in fact singing about another jacson, classic usa for reusing city names..) With the food box and esky restocked we were straight to the information centre with the intention of making our way to Yellowstone.. 

The ranger managed to suss us out before we reached the counter and immediately suggested the best free camping spot in town (which sat uptop a grassy knoll and had a kick ass view of the sun setting over the mountain range). He also gave us a list of hikes to check out in the area and gave us some invaluable advice to spend more time exploring the snow capped mountains, lakes and canyons of the Grand Teton National Park rather than the more famous Yellowstone. His exact words being "once you've seen one smelly hole in the ground, you've seen them all..." 

The highlight of our stay was a hike around Jenny Lake and up to 'Inspiration Point' which provided a panoramic view of the lake and surrounding area! The area was home to some cheeky marmots and was the first place we had visited in a long while with active bears roaming around. Hiking in bear country wasnt my favourite experience, there are warning signs at the trailheads recommending hikers carry bear spray ( and know how to use it) and make noise throughout the hike to prevent sneaking up on the bear. Rhys and I didn't fancy forking out $80 for some pepper spray in the off chance that we found ourselves face to face with a grizzly so went the latter and made lots of noise..I think we're quickly running out of things to say to each other!

After a big day of hiking we headed back to our camp site (once again with a great view of the Tetons, this time reflected In a beautiful lake) , made ourselves a mean camp fire and experimented with the creation of s'mores. It's an art we didn't quite conquer on our first attempt but melted chocolate, sticky gooey marshmallows and cookies taste good no matter how bad they look!