Sign Forests and Great Divides

It is interesting what small towns will do differentiate themselves. Vegreville has its World's Biggest Easter Egg; Vulcan its Enterprise statue; and Cranbrook its Big Truck. Here in Watson Lake, they have created a sign forest. It is a park around the Vistor's centre where people bring signs that they have happened to purloin from faraway places. The latest count has 16000 signs here. Sixteen thousand of anything is a lot, and even though this attraction seems contrived,
it is impressive.

Today we crossed over the continential divide. If you are a raindrop, depending on which side of the hill you fall, you will wind up in either the Pacific or Arctic oceans. For such a significant geographic feature, especially in the larger-than-life wilderness up here, it was notable only in how unimpressive was. Whereas Kicking Horse Pass and Vermillion Pass are quite dramatic,
this just seemed like any other hill on the road.

We found a small campground to set up in before Teslin, and will be heading to Whitehorse tomorrow.

North of 60, at last

Today we crossed over the Yukon Border, stopping at Watson Lake. En route, we stopped at Liard Hotsprings to soak ourselves. The place has a great ambiance because it is very undeveloped; it is basically a two pools of hot water in the forest which you get to via a wooden boardwalk. Also, unlike deveoped 'springs' or spas, which are quite uniform in temperature, this one kept getting harder as you moved closer to the source. The rite of passage, I was told, was to get close enough to the source to add stone on the cairns located there. I managed to place a couple without getting too badly parboiled. It was an intersting experiment of the senses; there is definitely a point, probably only a few degrees difference, where the sensation on your skin goes from 'hot but endurable' to painfully hot.

In the parking lot, we also saw an RVer's wet dream: some monstrocity which looked like an RV version of a Hummer. With Swiss plates, it looked like a military vehicle that was converted to recreational use. The 'cabin' looks like it raises up to create space when it was parked. It certainly attracted a lot of attention, and one can only speculate as to how many gallons per mile it takes.

After seeing all the Greyhound-style RV's hauling SUVs behind them, this was totally over the top. I want to profusely recant my previous diatribe about bringing too much stuff. Compared to what we've seen, we're some of the lightest travellers
on the road.

Summit Peak

This morning we walked up the highway and did a scramble up Summit Peak. The Rockies here seem a lot more weathered, they are basically big piles of scree and rubble, like the Rockies near Banff, but unlike the Rockies further south, they lack the dramatic cliffs of the front ranges. Looking down from the summit, we saw a very verdant valley, it looked like something from Lord of the Rings.

Another thing that struck me was how pristine it was: no railroad tracks, fire roads, cut blocks, siesmic lines, power lines, pipelines or even hiking trails. One could easily imagine this is what the early explorers saw as they made their way west. The subsequent impression was a bit more unsettling: how rare it is becoming to find unscathed places like this.

This morning at Fort Nelson the Visitor Info person provided us with much information as to what there is to do along the upcoming sections of the Alaska highway. We're getting a little stir crazy and need to get away from the car for a bit.

Today we drove to Stone Mountain Provicial Park, which is at pretty much the north end of the Rocky Mountain Range. We got ourselves a primo campsite, a few mere metres from the lake. After setting up camp, we went and explored Baba Canyon, which was a nice little hike up a canyon. Even though it was a two hour hike, we certainly got an impression of remoteness: we had this valley all to ourselves.

Fort Nelson

Today's blog comes to you from Ft. Nelson (rougly 59 deg lat). It is 11PM, and is alarmingly bright outside. Certainly bright enough to read a book or go for a walk. For someone who doesn't like to go to bed until it's dark outside, this is certainly messing with my mind. Such are the joys of living on a planet with a tilted rotational axis.

Today was our first day driving up the Alaska highway, starting at the famous 'Mile 0'. I find you can read about things, but the magnitude of it doesn't register until you experience them. Like the fact this 2400 kilometer highway was built in 8 months. That's about 10km per day, from clearing the forest, cutting grades, building bridges etc.. Then you think of the fact they had 25000 people here in the middle of nowhere building it, and all the logistics that requires.... food, accommodation, supplies, equipment.

Dawson Creek.

Today we drove from Edmonton to Dawson Creek, rolling past farmers fields and Boreal forest. The drive itself was uneventful, and we made good time. We also inaugerated our mansion/tent. It's easy to see how escalation of standards occurs.... it will be hard going back to our small backpacking tent after luxuriating in this monster.

And we're off!

Today is the first day of summer, and it's also the first day of our trip to Alaska.

"A thousand mile journey begins with one step", wrote Lao Tzu. In our case, our 10 000 km Odyssey began with a drive to Edmonton. Thank goodness for cars, or we'd be walking a long time. I'm not sure how much you can embellish a drive to Edmonton..... but after all the preparation, it was nice to start the wheels rolling.

Two Days to Go.....

For those of you joining this blog, welcome. On the right are some links; one to our photos (nothing there yet), and another to a map of the places we've been (also pretty empty right now).

As you may know, we're heading up to Alaska in two days, and will be there for July and August, then we return in Sept for a few weeks before we head off to Southeast Asia for 3 months. At least that's the plan....

Right now we have that deer-in-the headlights feeling.... we know something big is coming up, but it's not quite registering yet. We've been quite busy the past few weeks getting everything ready, so perhaps once we start staring at the pavement zipping by in a few days, it will start to sink in.

So, do you like..... stuff?

I'm sure those of you who are Simspons fans recognize the quote... Ralph articulates this priceless question to Lisa in his awkward attempt to hit on her. In five words, it succinctly embodies the collective fear of every male on the planet... trying to think up some clever thing to say to strike up a conversation with a potential suitor, and failing miserably. Such is the genius of The Simpsons.

Well, as I stare at the pile of stuff that we plan on bringing with us, I could not help but think of that quote...... we sure must like all our stuff, since we're bringing a lot of it.

Over the past few days, we have been packing up in earnest. The impression so far is that we were overly optimistic with how much space we needed in the Subaru when we did our little 'simulation' last week. I think we're going to wait until Thursday then do a panic rationalization.

'Cancel the trip to Alaska, honey; let's go shopping for an Expedition instead! That way we can pack up all our stuff and head out on our trip to ..... D'OH!!!'

How much stuff do you need?

So over the past few weeks we made a list of all the things we will need (or think we will need) for our Alaska / Yukon trip. Given the fact we will be gone for 10 weeks, and during that time, we will be car camping, backpacking, and sea kayaking, we were both getting anxious about whether all that gear would fit in our tiny Subaru.

It's a bit of a paradox: on any extended tour, you want to be as light and agile as possible, but still, given the duration of the trip, we wanted some creature comforts, such as a bigger tent, a couple camp-chairs, etc, since we would be doing this for 10 weeks.

So this anxiety reached a crescendo this past week, and we broke down and stuffed sleeping bags and blankets into duffel bags and backpacks and then loaded them up along with basic kayaking gear, chest cooler, food box, palatial tent, inflatable mattresses, water container, sundry other items, and a partridge in a pear tree.

We were quite relieved when, after we loaded up the Subaru, we realized that we wouldn't be needing to bring a U-haul along with us, or buy an Expedition. Whew!

For a while I was trying to rationalize if we needed to bring so much stuff, but have eventually made peace with the fact that it also depends on the size of the container: an Imprezia stuffed to the ceiling is probably still travelling lighter than the average half-loaded Expedition.

Whether it's a car, or a house, it always seemed best to keep your containers small, so by necessity you remove the temptation to fill these things (and your life) with clutter.

Except now of course.....

Welcome!

Welcome to to our blog.

It seems like the most difficult aspect of setting up a blog these days is trying to find a clever new address that no-one on the internet has thought of before. It reminds me of that song by Zappacosta (there's a trip down memory lane for you Canadians), "It's All Been Done Before": I think I might have something (original), but I'm not really sure / I should have started 20 years ago / And what do you look for / When It's all been done before. He was referring of course, to songwriting (apparently, he thought all possible songs about cars and girls had already been written in 1980; would he be surprised), but that refrain kept blasting through my head like a stuck CD as Carole and I tried for over an hour to find some variation of the theme 'Top of the Hill'.

Of course, all obvious spellings and mutations were already spoken for, but if you can't be clever and original, you can always be sneaky and underhanded. So with the article 'the' and by using the much overlooked hyphen, we created 'the-top-of-the-hill', and managed to muscle our way into the apparently very overcrowded blog namespace.

So why 'top of the hill'? Well we've been planning for a number of years to do the sabbatical we are about to undertake, but life kept having other plans: career issues, family, other urgencies, etc. It seems the stars have finally aligned after we turned 40. But 40, as the saying goes is 'over the hill'. Well, it doesn't quite seem that way to us. If the rest is 'downhill', then it stands to logic that this must be the top, no? In any event, the view ahead is fantastic, and when it comes time for the 'downhill' part, we'll be strapping on our telemark skis and making the most of the descent, yipping, hollering, and laughing along the way.