Mountains~Trees~Rivers~Wildlife

The last few days have been very eventful. We have seen some awesome scenery and tons of wildlife! Below is the whole family at the sign that points to the start of the Alaskan Highway, and the Milepost Zero sign.

We traveled to the Canadian Rockies after leaving Dawson Creek. The mountains were spectacular! We saw a lot of trees...a lot of trees...rivers, big rock hills and more trees. Seriously, I've never seen so many trees in my life! But they are beautiful...except when they block a good photo opportunity :) 

The rivers have been really beautiful too. Just the kind of place I've always dreamed of  building a cabin...where I could go to sleep to the sound of the running water. It's just so serene.

Just after we passed Fort Nelson, we saw Stone Sheep on Stone Mountain. There were three rams way up on a cliff, so far that it was impossible to get a clear picture. As we drove away from them, four ewes and two babies crossed the road right in front of us! I was able to get some great pictures as they leapt up the cliff beside us. 

We also started seeing bull Bison along the side of the road. I'm still holding out for a cow and calf, but the bulls were pretty impressive! The closest one was no more than 30 feet from the RV and he actually climbed up the bank closer to us! It is surprising how bold some of the wildlife is. 

On Monday we spotted several black bears and two brown bears. I was so excited to get good pictures of them! Again, they were right alongside the road, 30-40 feet away. We stayed in the RV :) but they were very calm and simply went about their business. We spotted several more bears on Tuesday and also saw a mother black bear with two cubs!! That was so amazing! The cubs were adorable and I got some simply irresistible shots. 

We even got to see a porcupine!! I got within about four feet of him....so amazing!

The desire to stay grows stronger with each passing mile. I could live here for years and never get tired of it :)

We have only been on the road six days and already we have seen enough to last a life time!

The scenery is so amazing there is no way to describe it's beauty and pictures do not do it justice.  To really appreciate the incredibleness (Is that a word?) you definitely have to see it in person. 

What really captures me is the wildness all around. It really is an untamed land. You can drive for miles and not see even a house. Not even a log cabin in the woods. It is literally uninhabited. 

An overview of the large mammals we have seen:

4 moose-three bulls and one cow
13 black/brown bears
9 stone sheep-three rams, four ewes and two babies
5 elk-all females
6 bison-all bulls
1 porcupine    
1 fox

My photography wish list:
Caribou
Doll Sheep
Sea Lions
Otters
Bald Eagle
Grizzly Bear
Mustangs

We'll see how many I get to mark off! Hopefully quite a few!

When we got to Watson Lake, we stopped at the famous sign forest. There are hundreds and hundreds of signs tacked to posts. People from all over the world leave signs, boots, gloves, dusts pans...I saw a few other objects which I won't mention here :) We found lots of Michigan signs and even found one from Kingston, Mich, which is seven miles from our house! 

Today we stopped at Porcupine Creek and Seth, Levi and Lydia spelled our name with rocks on a high bank. We had seen miles and miles of people's names alongside the road, so when we stopped to get a picture of some mountains, they jumped out and put ours up. 

On Tuesday, we passed a couple on two motorcycles. They were parked alongside the road flagging people down. Dad turned around to see if they needed help. Turns out they were out of gas! We were 50 miles from the next gas station. Another couple in an RV stopped and together the three guys tried to siphon gas from our RV and the other couple's car, but they couldn't get it too work. We offered to give the couple a ride to town to get gas, but they decided to stay and keep flagging people down until they found someone with gas. They were from Georgia, U.S.

We continued on and camped beside a lake that night. The next morning, as we passed a gas station that was just about 2 kilometers from where we had camped and we saw the same couple filling up! We turned around and asked them what happened. They said a lady stopped and she happened to have one gallon of gas. She said she wasn't going to pack it...but it just happened to get packed anyway! That was quite the adventure! 

Here are a few other misc. pictures....click play to start the slideshow or use the arrows.