After bivouacking last night at the wonderful and wonderfully com evident Bow River Camp at the southern gates of the Canadian Rockies, and after a customary hike around the spectacular Lake Louise in Banff National Park, we just completed mile 4940. We are now camped in rustic, isolated, cold, grizzly-inhabited Wabasso camp in northern beautiful Jasper National Park in Alberta. The temperature tonight is to go into the high 30s, that's Fahrenheit not Celsius.
Tomorrow, if the Defender starts (it is the cold and not the regular gas that affects it), after a visit to the lovely town of Jasper, we point the Defender northwest on Highway 16 (aka The Hiway of Tears) for 600 miles to Kitwanga, BC, where at the North to Alaska sign we will head straight north to I Alaska, still about 1500 miles away, by way of Dawson City in the Yukon. I brought along Johnny Horton's North to Alaska song on my iPad to play at that intersection, although I have listened to it at least 100 times already on the trip when I don't play Pete Seeger's This Land is Your Land, lots of oldies but goodies, and all of Wagner.
We are running a couple of days behind schedule for me to drive the Dalton Hiway again and make it to Denali by the 15th, which I hope to make up, but bearing in mind that it is the journey that counts. I am enjoying the people I meet on this trip as much as the road. Many of them earn their patches just for listening to my stories, and Donner's too, as told by me.
It is raining now, so once we go into the tent and write in my journal and plan for tomorrow's journey, I will try to send another posting to my blog. Nothing profound, mind you, just some reflections from my idle mind as I drive the long, now cold, road north.
Ed and Donner, from on the road
P.S...I apologize and take full responsibility for all typos, errors and ambiguities in this message. I do not have time to edit or even proof my messages. Please do the best you can to interpret what I wrote.
No comments:
Post a Comment