Alaska Trip - Day 12

We spent 12 hours on the road today, but it was definitely worth it. We’ve been back on the Alaskan Highway, and today we traveled from Whitehorse, Yukon Territory all the way to Fort Nelson, British Columbia.

Two nights in a row of sleeping in the car was not fun, and I hope we can avoid it the rest of the trip. After another trip to Wal-mart and stop at Tim Horton’s for breakfast, we quickly hit the road this morning.

I should call this the “wildlife day” because we saw more wildlife today than all the other days combined so far, especially during the route between Watson Lake and Fort Nelson. That stretch has been my favorite of the entire trip, with its scenery combined with the wildlife.

So here’s the approximate rundown for today:
2 grizzly bears
4 black bears
Approx. 10 elk
Approx. 10 stone sheep
3 moose
2 caribou
2 mule deer

…and just about all of them were captured on film.

I would say all the driving was worth it, and tonight we are staying in the nicest place we’ve stayed the entire trip…the Shannon Hotel, named after my lovely wife, Shannon, of course.

The bad news is, as we were close to town, we hit a random gravel spot on the highway at 65 mph the same time a huge semi did going the other way, and a chunk of gravel cracked our windshield. Looks like we’ll be fixing that hopefully tomorrow.

Oh, and we decided today that we are going to go down through Vancouver and Seattle on our way back. Steven has never seen the Pacific coast before, and I’ve never been to both places. Heck yes.