6/13/2009 Trees, Bears and a Mudslide

It's time to move on. Even though we are paid for two more nights here and we don't like to do that, well, sometimes its just better if you suck up the loss and move on. This is one of those situations.

We noticed the clouds moving in this morning as we were tearing down and packing up. We couldn't see the tops of the mountains.

On the way out I caught this glacier in my viewfinder. Take note of the blue color.

A going down the road picture, first of what may be many today.

Bears!

We saw three bears today! The first one Bob saw from a distance down the road giving me plenty of time to get the camera ready. That really doesn't take all that much because it sits on my lap every time we're in the truck.

He didn't seem to be too afraid of us although he did head for the woods.

The second one we saw just came out of nowhere and it just isn't good practice to slam on the brakes when one is towing 35' of 5th wheel at 50 miles per hour, throwing it in reverse and backing up to take a picture of a bear that in all likelihood is deep in the woods by the time you get backed up all the way. You'll just have to take my word for it that we saw a second one.

The third one we saw was a ways down the road and made a fast exit into the woods before we could get close enough for a picture that would depict a bear versus just a black blob that could be a bear....or a tree stump. Yes, we've been fooled by several tree stumps.

I think the bears should sit on the side of the road on their haunches and raise one paw in a wave, if you will, as we pass by. They don't seem to get it that humans would much rather have that than picture after picture of their ass ends as they beat feet into the woods.

We had such pretty scenery along the way. Canada has beautiful lakes. So serene.

Here's another one of those going down the road pictures.

As I mentioned yesterday there was a mudslide on a road that we need to use in order to go north. It is now open during work hours but with an escort only. We were flagged down and told that we would have a half hour wait for our escort. The flag lady explained all the rules for following the lead and told us to shut down the engine to the truck. As it turned out we only had to wait 17 minutes and we were underway.

OH what a mess this!

There are several pieces of heavy equipment working at removing the mud off the roadway.

This piece of equipment got buried.

When this first happened the mud was halfway up the side of standard sized pick up truck. We saw a picture on the Internet and try as I might I can't link it here.

Water and mud are still flowing across the road and we were instructed not to stop for anything.

Look at the trees towards the back of this picture, that's how deep the mud was over everything.

Coming out of the woods with that you can imagine we were glad to see this pristine scene. (Another way of saying A Going Down the Road picture)

You have to wonder who designed this road and bridge? Who puts a single lane bridge right after a curve in the road?

I'm sorry, but I gotta do it!

Now there is rhyme and reason as to why we took this route!

We couldn't not come here and not go through a town named after none other than my own BOB QUINN! Or stop by the airfield of Bob Quinn Lake Airport!

We would have stayed here if weren't towing our own "lodge" behind us!

I tried very hard to find out who this Bob Quinn is, or maybe was, but I couldn't find a thing. I googled that name and could get the community, the airport and the lodge. Its a mystery to me.

This was taken while standing in front the the Bob Quinn Airport runway. This short section of hardtop is not the runway, the runway is off to the right.

This was our traffic pattern for 99% of our day. I'm not kidding one bit. For mile after mile we were the only ones on the road.

We are soooo tired of this scenery! NOT!

I think these road engineers have a really sick sense of humor. I'll apologize for the poor quality of this picture but it shows what I'm talking about all the same. We are going down an 8% grade, on a gravel road and we came to this.....

That turn had to be one of sharpest hairpins we've had to deal with to date.

Trees. I have seen 2,426,138 trees today. Give or take a few thousand. Go back and look at the pictures and take notice of how many trees are in each one.

I've seen big tree, little trees, bright green trees, dark green trees, leaning trees, dead trees, trees on hills, trees on mountains, trees in valleys, trees lake side, trees on river banks, trees lining the roads....a real big bunch of trees! Ok, I'm better now, I just had to get that out of my system.

We were supposed to stop today in Iskut, British Columbia. We had a campground picked out, it had WIFI, it had cable, a nice view from the site, the price was right but the town it was in didn't have a store in which to buy beer and Bob was out. After the drive he had today through a mudslide, hairpin turns, 8% downhill grades, well at the end of the day he would have really enjoyed popping that top. So we kept going. We ended up in Dease Lake about 50 miles further up the road. Its a good thing. We're that much closer to Alaska, we bought beer, we have WIFI, its all good. Except. We don't have cable and our TV's are analog. We don't have those magic boxes yet and for just one night its too much trouble to set up the satellite dish. Thank heavens we have a good sized DVD selection and ones he hasn't seen as yet. I have WIFI and if I can play Scrabble online I'm a happy camper.

I'll leave you with this....

Oh yeah, a forewarning....the farther north we go, the prettier it gets, the prettier it gets, the more Going Down the Road pictures you will be subjected to.

WILDLIFE COUNT:

4 Bear

2 Marmot

and a Dead Porcupine