More trip highlights

I wanted to include a few more photos and videos (since Mikey and Maddie enjoyed Cole's first flip so much) to show some of our experiences on our drive up to Anchorage.

A picture of Falcor when it was snowing and he was still cleanish.

 On the lake at the Northern Rockies Lodge

Here are a few move videos of Cole and I and our cool tricks. The snow was about 3 feet deep and untouched. We couldn't resist diving into it.

Our back license plate after things were getting a bit dirtier. 

Cole nailing our front (clean) license plate to the Sign Post Forrest in Watson Lake.

Coyote outside of Haines Junction.

Got our grills in for Katie Whittle! Mostly looks like our teeth are rotting. :)

Dirtier version of "Alaska or Bust." We got a LOT of honks and thumbs ups once we got to Alaska with this written on the back.

Another shot of the Matanuska Glacier awesomeness.

We're heading down to the Kenai Peninsula tomorrow for a job fair in Soldotna, so hopefully we'll catch some good shots and get to do some exploring!

Tok, AK to Anchorage - finally!

We headed out this morning after a delicious breakfast at Fast Eddy's. We had about 320 miles to go to get to Anchorage and we were pretty excited to arrive. However this stretch of highway was definitely one of the most scenic on our whole trip. We were going through some massive mountain ranges and still on such a beautiful day.

The mountain in this picture is Mt. Stanford. It's one of Alaska's10 highest peaks at around 16,000 ft.

At a rest stop. Looks like the top of the world. Falcor is so awesome.

We finally saw a couple of moose!! We were cruising a long and I was gazing into the woods and I just shrieked "MOOSE!" It was pretty exciting.

Everywhere we looked was absolutely gorgeous.

This is the Matanuska Glacier. It's not too far from Anchorage and you can walk around on it so we'll definitely be going back to check it out.

We made it to Anchorage and our little studio apartment that we're renting for the next 5 weeks. It's very nice, in a little house in the Spenard area of town. There is a lot to see and do around us so we'll have a lot to check out and do while we're here. We are directly next door to the largest bar in Alaska, Chilkoot Charlie's, which we definitely visited last night, and definitely deserves its own post. We're hoping to bring a video camera in tonight so we can capture some of the magic.

Happy to be here!! Miss you all!

Haines Junction to TOK, ALASKAA!!!!

Left Haines Junction this morning on another beautiful blue sunny day, magnificent mountains all around us, and plenty of epic photo ops.

But none so great as this welcome to the great state of Alaska. Great to reach the state of our destination and be back in the U.S.A.!!

First panorama shot in AK.

Saw plenty of caribou today. Still waiting on a moose....

 Today we also solved one of the great mysteries of the Alaskan-Canadian Highway, by visiting Burwash Landing, the site of the World's Largest Gold Pan!!!

       

"But wait one second!" exclaim all of you loyal blog followers. "Wasn't there a previous post about the World's Largest Gold Pan?!"

The answer is yes. And a quick comparison to Cole's 6'2" bod tells me that the Burwash Landing Goldpan has to be the winner.

 

Watson Lake to Haines Junction

Waking up in the morning in Watson Lake was freeeezing cold! But sunny and beautiful.

Watson Lake's main tourist attraction is the Sign Post Forest and when we had tried to go by there last night, we discovered that it was a forest of 3 foot deep snow. I don't know why we were surprised, this has been the story of our life, but we were not dressed for that so we decided to visit in the morning. So when we left our hotel, we were bundled in our snowpants and snowboots and equipped with our own sign to contribute to the Sign Post Forest.

There are over 71,000 signs here. The first one was nailed to a tree by an American GI with the distance to his home town in Indiana. Or Illinois. Or somewhere like that.

This is our sign! Our front license plate from Falcor with our names, dates and distances from Seattle to Watson Lake to Anchorage.

This bridge is the longest water span on the Alaskan Highway, but there was no water in sight when we crossed.

When we were back on the road, there was a sign for a photo attraction so we took the little road and this is what we saw... random.

In the afternoon we stopped in Whitehorse, which is the capitol of the Yukon Territory. This "city" is by far the largest city in the province with 25,000 of the total 35,000 people in the whole province. One of their attractions is the SS. Klondike pictured below. This is right before Cole tried to climb aboard and set off some crazy loud alarms, sending us running from the Royal Mounties.

We ended the day in Haines Junction which was BEAUTIFUL. Right at the base of the Kluane mountains and so close to Alaska that we could taste it. This picture was taken near Haines Junction.

Taken from the porch outside our hotel.

We ended the night hanging out in the Lounge of our hotel, chatting with locals, playing pool and some weird swinging string game.

Prince George to Fort St. John BC to the Northern Rockies Lodge to Watson Lake

I am able to write a bit and upload some photos today since we have some good internets! So I'll basically be covering 3 days....

We left Prince George (not a super awesome town) on Sunday morning, with a whole fresh layer of more snow on the ground! Apparently it was "sooo unexpected" according to the 13 year old who was running the gas station we stopped at on the way out of town.

It snowed pretty much the whole day on our way to Fort St. John, which was inconvenient driving, but overall not too bad and made everything that much prettier.

Our main stop of the day was in the fabulous Chetwynd, BC. Chetwynd, I'll have you know, is the Chainsaw Sculpture Capital of the WORLD! And it was not dissappointing in the least. There are endless sculptures all along the highway.

Cole is always welcoming the opportunity to ride a tiger. Especially a Northern BC Tiger.

We got to Fort St. John early enough to go to the store, buy some broccoli and carrots, steam them in our rice cooker (which was luckily very easy to reach), and go to the movie theater to see Rango, which was very good. I highly recommend it.

The next day, also known as yesterday, also known as Monday, we planned on driving from Ft. St. John to Ft. Nelson. Well we got to Ft. Nelson fairly early and realized that it was a boring and unrealistically expensive town. The hard part about driving on this highway, especially in March, is that everything outside of the "major towns" is closed. We see a lot of signs for some awesome tourist attraction with a big piece of parchment paper over it with the words "See You In May!" accross the front of it.

Anyways, the next town after Ft. Nelson was another 300 miles away so we couldn't make it all the way there. Plus one of the main places we wanted to visit was Liard Hot springs which was between these two distanced towns. So Cole did some brilliant research and found a lodge that was open and made us a reservation on the shores of Muncho Lake.

The drive from Ft. Nelson to the lodge also turned out to be the most beautiful driving we've had so far. It was nothing but blue skys and amazing Rocky Mountain views.

The Northern Rockies Lodge was so awesome and beautiful and located right on the edge of this massive frozen lake. It was a little pricier than we've been spending on lodging, but it was our "vacation night" and a much needed treat.

We had a great time walking around on the lake, taking pictures and slidding around after we got there.  

Cole's frozen beard after face-planting in the snow.

This is the lodge with the lake and mountains in the background.

Morning view of the lodge from the lake.

This morning, we left the lodge (after spending an hour changing a lady's tire on her enormous Ram truck), and headed to Liard Hot Springs which was only about 30 minutes away. Everyone who has been on the Alaskan Highway ever has told us to stop at these springs and they were just as amazing as we hoped they would be. I didn't bring my camera, but it was very lovely.

When we were almost to Watson Lake, where we are staying tonight, we crossed over the border into the Yukon Territory. That's pretty far north...

Today we also got to see some buffalo on the side of the road. Now we're just holding out for a moose!

Tonight we're in a nice cabin in Watson Lake, watching Jon Stewart and cruisin the web. Feels like home. :)

Cache Creek to Prince George, BC

Today was another great day driving up the AlCan.Although today felt quite a bit more like we were actually driving the AlCan, as opposed to yesterday which felt more like we were driving to Chelan. The snow last night while we were in Cache Creek turned the dessert to a white wonderland. We also started climbing uphill to get into the mountains so everything was very snowy.

Our main stop of the day was in a town called Quesnel (pronounced kwe-nel). Milepost told us about the Quesnel and District Museum and Archives and we knew we had to see it. There was a creepy doll named Mandy, lots of sewing materials, a moose head, and this creepy guy. Just kidding that's Cole.

After our awesome tour of the museum, we stopped by the river for some lunch and a walk. The ice over and around the river is breaking up so it was pretty cool to see big chunks floating down the river. Deffinitely feeling more like the AlCan.

Getting fierce on the Voyage Rock...

Quesnel has these fire hydrants painted like figures from the town's rich history! 

Classic

 Quesnel: also the home of the world's largest gold pan. Wow! That's a big gold pan!

So the successful 6 hour drive landed us in Prince George, BC where we conveniently booked a lovely motel right accross the road from the Treasure Cove Casino! We're hoping to strike it rich in gold country. Or at least hear a really great cover band playing some Black Eyed Peas favorites!

Seattle to Bellingham to Cache Creek

The idea for this blog is to provide the story of our journey to and within Alaska through visual representation. I would like to encourage you to visit Cole's blog, http://www.beirdman.blogspot.com/ for more details on our day-to-day experiences. I will be focusing more on the pictures and videos used to record this momentous journey.

On March 16th, we packed up our Subie, fondly known as 'Falcor the Luck Wagon', to the brim, plus multiple cargo boxes and tupperwears on the roof, and left Seattle.

After a fond farewell to family, friends, Deuce and Trip, we finally felt like we were ready to hit the road and see what was in store for us.

Our first stop was in the beautiful and far off city of Bellingham, WA. My brother, Kevin, lives there while he goes to school at Western WA University. Two nights posing as college students in Bellingham was wonderfully fun, and the snowboarding perfection was not dissappointing in the least. 9 feet of snow in the last week, including 24 inches in the last 24 hours, equalled powder perfection. It was truly the best day of boarding I personally had ever experienced. We (mostly me) did a lot of falling, getting stuck, and embarassing attempts at jumps. Here is a fantastic example of Cole's front flip (take 1):

We left Bellingham this morning to head towards the border crossing at Sumas. It was easy-peasy so that was lucky. There was truly no way that we could unpack that rediculous car and put it back in place in a way that would allow us to continue. This picture was taken on Highway 1 (or Route 1 in Canadian speak) shortly after crossing the border. Falcor barely broke a sweat.

Our lunch stop was at the Alexandra Bridge crossing over the Fraser River. The bridge we crossed was the second largest fixed arch bridge in the WORLD! Or perhaps North America, not sure but who cares. This bridge is not the bridge we drove on. This bridge is old and not safe to walk on. That's probably not true, we both walked on it, but it was scary. This bridge is the old Alexandra Bridge built in the 1920s and has been replaced. But it was truly a beautiful little hike.

The following picture is an example of some of the dangers of driving through Canada towards Alaska. Alaska is the 49th state, and Grizzly Bears live there.

This is for my head shot portfolio. I'm sure it will really come in handy while job searching in a state where rubber boot brands are the most important fashion statement.

We rolled into Cache Creek and though it was hard to pass up the Castle Inn Motel, we decided to stay in the luxurious Sundowner Inn, where we watched the Husky victory, and then wandered accross the street for the Cache Creek Pub's Rock Trivia Night. We got 3rd place and won an MGD beer bottle opener. It's very sturdy, and we're very proud.