Steve and Ellen's Adventures: September 2015

Chapter 11, 2 Sept 2015. Some may say "Where has he gone? Others say "Oh No, He's back.
A lot of time has gone by very quickly and a lot has happened.
I left with us spending the night at the airport near Glenallen Ak. The next morning, 12th Aug, we are flying to Ellen's cousin's place in Wrangell-Elias National Park for a few days of roughing it smoothly on Fireweed Mountain. Their summer place and guest house are "off the grid" but not to say without electricity. Since our visit 3 years ago, they now have full time electricity with only 3 large solar panels. Almost like home, except for the outhouse part. We enjoyed the visit immensely especially the flight to a remote high mountain valley with lake for a day of picking wild blueberry's. The next day
we had our first meal of wild Dall Sheep at Dorn's brother's camp, thanks to the successful hunt by Dorn's nephew and his friend. Thank you Dorn and Roni for the hospitality.
Our time in Alaska was fast coming to a close. We traveled to Tok and on to the Canada border. The 250 miles down to Whitehorse then onto the Cassier highway south to Steward, BC and Hyder, Ak. We stayed in Steward and went to Hyder because there is a elevated boardwalk to see the bears catch the salmon in the stream. The first day there were no bears to be seen. The next morning we were there bright and early, but still no bears. Not easily discouraged we returned late afternoon and soon a black bear arrived but didn't stay very long. An hour later a large female grizzly came and put on a wonderful show splashing up and down the creek catching salmon.
Leaving Steward early, we stopped for breakfast at a work camp kitchen. After feeding all the residents, i.e., loggers, construction workers, of the work camp, that live in temporary quarters on site, they open the eating area to the general public. My pancakes were good but Ellen's eggs benedict left room for improvement. Thinking about it, real loggers and construction men don't eat eggs benedict.
We stopped in Terrace BC because in that area the spirit bear might be seen. We day tripped to Kitimat but no spirit bear, just some huge Sitka spruce. One was over 40 feet around and over 500 years old. The next day we drove to see the huge lava field from a volcano that erupted 200 years ago. Some places the lava was 100 feet deep. Still looking for the spirit bear, we drove toward Gingoix and Laxgatis'ap. Where do they get the names for these towns? En route, at a Y in the road, we turned onto a dirt road and continued another 75 miles. At the end we turned around and came back and no spirit bears to be found, just a lot of dirt and mud on the truck. I might add a spirit bear is a rare white bear having special powers to the native people and both parent bears must have the recessive white gene. I think they should also be called phantom bears.
We went south from Prince George down the Cariboo Highway, an old gold mining trail and stopped in Quesnel for the night. There we learn of Barkerville, a productive gold mining town in 1865. It has been reborn as a living history village of gold mining with people in period costumes. We spent the day and didn't get to see it all but did get the better part done. Some interesting facts on China town of gold mine towns were they didn't want to associate with the Europeans or the other way around. There was a funny skit at the abandoned gold mine looking for investors to reopen it. All the audience were asked where they were from, to which the actor would embellish the big money from their hometown in 1865. When he found some people from England, Germany and best of all Switzerland, obviously bankers were in attendance. People actually had tears coming down their cheeks due to his carrying on. So if you are ever in Quesnel, go to Barkerville and spend the day in a real gold mine town.
Highway 97 in BC is a very scenic drive, lots of tall pines and many towns have wonderful flowers, especially their hanging baskets. In fact all of BC is scenic with high mountains along TransCanada #1
and especially through Canada's Glacier National Park. We had quite a lot of rain along that area so we didn't stop very often but we're not complaining because they certainly need it because of the fires.
We entered the U.S. at the farthest NorthWest crossing in Montana. We stayed in the Kootenai National Forest along route 37 which runs along a huge lake and is one of the most scenic valleys we've ever driven through. We are now staying in Libby, Mt and are exploring the area. Tonight we saw about 50 mountain sheep, mostly ewes and kids but there were 3 huge rams. We also saw lots of deer and turkeys too.
I'll sign off from Big Sky country, Libby, Montana, on route 2, the first major U.S. highway to go coast to coast, Maine to Washington.
Steve