Alaska, we made it!!!!!

Hi Everyone-
After 4,097 miles we made it to Wasilla/Palmer Alaska!  Amazingly we didn't break down, woo hoo.  Our first drive through the town was a bit overwhelming because the reality of life hit us hard after two weeks of vacationing.  The Alcan was an amazingly beautiful highway. Total wildlife count stands at 9 black bears, 2 brown bears, 1 grizzly, 3 moose, countless stone sheep, buffalo, caribou, deer and elk. Lucy saw 37 squirrels, 9 different species, haha. We decided if there is a good and bad guy, lucy is the bad guy because the squirrels always win.

Lucy watching for squirrels in a field of flowers.  She's been watching for squirrels the entire trip haha.

The muddy silver bullet, after driving through miles and miles and hours of hours of construction.  There has been extreme flash flooding/land slides near Chetwynd, BC.

We finally made it onto the Alaskan Highway (ALCAN).  It says that the road it paved all the way to Alaska but it was m ore like 92% paved with several spots of gravel and dirt where the road washed out.

Black bear on the side of the road, he was munching on berries and then looked up and stared Nate down while he took the picture.

Reindeer on the side of the road.

Summit Lake.

Stone Sheep, smaller than mountain goats.

Baby Stone sheep.

Our amazing campsite next to stone mountain.

One of the hundreds of lakes we drove by that we can't remember the name of now.

Tough guy eh.

Black Bear

Brown Bear, Nate was sure to point out the differences between him and his close cousin the grizzly.

Sign City in Watson Lake, Yukon. We found one from gunnison and even tiny Lake George, Colorado. No Woodland Park but I'm sure it's in there because there are thousands.

The Goose being silly when she gets bored.

Midnight at camp. This is as dark as it gets.

The elusive grizzly bear!

The Wrangell St. Elias Range after hundreds of miles of flat yukon territory.

Camp at Kluane Lake. It's a Glacial Lake but after so long on the road anything seems like a beach.

We have always thought it is very asian cliche to take pictures of signs but this one was well deserved.

Lucy is a master at finding a spot atop our junk.

Going for a mukluk hike. The mosquitos are no joke! We decided we need headnets and you better believe we can make mukluks and headnets look cool.

Moooosen

Born and raised in Colorado, but this is the first real mountain we've ever seen rising up to 17,000 feet from the 2,000 ft. tundra plain.

A poor picture of the matsuniska glacier about an hour from palmer. Better pictures will come when we get time to go visit it after some house hunting.

Finally made it to Wasilla. This is our temporary home camping on lake lucille and lucy going for a midnight swim. We are looking for places to rent outside of town but the task  is a little daunting considering the huge area, lack of internet access, and the fact that there are very few rental properties that aren't apts. or duplexes. We might end up in the boonies but hey, we moved to alaska for a reason eh? We are staying in town for a few days then heading back out into the chugach wilderness while we have time and light. We'll continue posting until the adventures cease and the sun goes away. Hugs and Lucy kisses to everyone, she isn't shy.

More Canada - Eh?

Hi Everyone,
We're currently in Prince George slowly making progress after a 6 hour detour yesterday :(, we were stopped in between Jasper and Prince George because the road had been washed out by a flood that was 4 feet high.  Here's some pictures from the last couple days.

This is Lake Louise, we stopped at 8:00 in the morning and there was still a good amount of asain tour busses there, hence we didn't stay long. THey have an uncanny ability to act like no one else exists.

Lake Moraine, we managed to cut out the asian guy laying sideways on the log.

Perfect picture from Nate's outstretched arm.

Bow Lake, we hiked up to Bow falls and almost made it to Bow glacier.  The water was so bright blue, and we forgot the bug spray so we were eaten alive by the bugs.  Kristen had 50+ bites on her afterwards.  We won't forget the deet next time.

Lucy loved being in the water, but hated being on the leash.

Bow Falls, a few miles below the glacier.

Lucy loves the snow, she played in the snow field for a good 5 minutes before we told her we needed to keep hiking.

This is Bow Glacier, we didn't quite make it to the glacier because we still had a lot of driving to do.  Passed a group that was going up to explore the glacier for a few days.... we were very jealous.

On the way back to the car.

On the Icefield Parkway, amazing drive.

Hundreds of waterfalls were right off the highway.

The Icefield Pkwy makes glacier national park seem like a waste of time.

The famous Columbia Icefield and Athabasca glacier, we didn't stop because of the amount of tour busses in the parking lot.

The boat house at lake Meligne. Usually a beautiful lake surrounded by scraggly glacier covered peaks but we hit our first bad weather of the trip.

That didn't stop us though. Only canoe on the lake! 45 degrees with a constant drizzle took some of the fun out of it though.

brrrr

Headed to dawson's creek and into the yukon, so the pictures won't be as exciting but hopefully the stories will.

Canada- Eh!

It has been a little over a week since we left Colorado and I feel like so much has happened I don't know where to start.  Our first day driving we realized that our max speed was 40mph, any faster and the trailer would start to do the "death wobble."  This is when the trailer starts to fishtail like crazy behind the jeep.  We drove through Denver and said goodbye to our good friend Cole, he was nice enough to give us an Ipod nano as a going away present with plenty of String Cheese Incident on it which is one of our favorite bands to listen to on adventures.  Nate stopped in Longmont to see if there was anything we could do to stop the death wobble, he took out the hitch extension and afterwards we were going between 50-60mph which felt like we were flying after only going 40 for so long.  Camped the first night in Big Horn National Park in WY and slept great in the teardrop.  The next day we drove through Montana and when we stopped to have coffee on the side of the road we realized the stove connection didn't quite fit.  Luckily, Nate was able to fix this problem and we had coffee in no time :).  We camped outside of Anaconda in the National Forest which is on the Piltner scenic drive, it was beautiful and we were swarmed by 'squintos immediately.  Thank god for our bug net, it has saved us from being eaten alive several times.  We washed our hair in the river next to camp it was freezing but it got the job done.
          The third day we continued to drive, drive, drive.  We listened to Eiger Dreams on tape and recognized  "once chance pass" that he mentions on one of his climbs in Alaska.  Ironically, my Uncle Todd and Aunt Stacey were just telling us about this same exact pass.  That night we stayed in Idaho near Coeur de'Alene which is pretty close to the Canadian border.  The next morning we crossed the border into Canada.  It was my turn to drive the teardrop and the first corner I took was hair raising because a van coming the other direction had drifted into my lane.  It was close!!  We headed into Salmo and got stuck in a parade, we then realized that it was Canada's independence day.  We pulled off onto a logging road and set up camp for the night.  The following day we drove into Nelson and our plan was to hike on a nearby glacier, but as we were stopping for ice the hatch of the teardrop fell off!!!!  Our plans changed and we headed back to Nelson and spent a good couple of hours fixing it in the Walmart parking lot.  Once the glue had dried we drove up towards Walhalla Provincial Park and set up camp next to a river.  That night we decided to explore across the river.  Lucy had crossed the river with us but couldn't get up the side bank, she ended up getting swept downstream over a small waterfall and Nate ran ahead and grabbed her just before she floated into a larger river system.  When we crossed the river to get back to camp we tied a rope to her collar and guided her in safely.
     The next day we headed into Nakusp and stopped at the Hut Stop and had amazing burgers for lunch.  We were on the hunt for hot springs, and drove up an old logging road towards St. Leon Hot Springs.  On the road we came across three guys walking and they stopped us and asked if we could help pull their truck out.  Nate dropped the teardrop, myself and Lucy off while he and a second truck helped pull their truck out.  The guys were really nice and we ended up BBQ-ing with them afterwards.  Then we started looking for a campsite and did some unexpected 4-wheeling with the teardrop.  The road was very overgrown and we're lucky it's still in once piece!  We ended up driving back towards the hot springs, we walked down a steep hill and had a good soak with the colorful collective.  By the way, there are tons of hippies/hitch-hikers throughout Canada and according to the guys we met most Canadians call them "Tree Planters" haha.  The next day it was the 4th of July, no fireworks for us.  We took the ferry over to Revelstoke and ate lunch in town.  We met up with the three guys we had met the previous day and one of their friends was moving into a house to watch over a herd of sled dogs.  It was nice to hang out with them and they gave us pointers on where to camp and what to see.  That night we drove over Rogers Pass and camped on a logging road.  As we were eating dinner a black bear stumbled through our camp!  Lucy immediately took off after the bear, and I let out a blood- curdling scream as she ran after the bear.  Nate shocked Lucy's collar and stood ready with the bear mace.  He took off running and we didn't see him again.(yay!)  The next day we headed into Yoho National Park which is outside of Banff.  We hiked to Wapta falls which was amazing.  This is the first time we've paid for camping so far, we stayed at Monarch campground and were surrounded by beautiful mountains and turquoise rivers.  That night we hiked along the river and drove out to Takawawa Falls.  It has been quite a trip so far.  Here are some pictures so far, I'm hoping we'll be able to update the blog again in Jasper.  Cheers :)