Alaska Highway

We made it to the Pacific Ocean at Prince Rupert, British Columbia. Our campground is about a half a mile from the Ferry Terminal from which we will be departing tomorrow. Prince Rupert is quite isolated as it is separated from the next large town by mountains and valleys. We do not have cell phone service here because, as the campground owner put it, "the town is to cheap to get a cell phone franchise here." He did tell us that we have WiFi at the campground, but it doesn't seem to reach our campsite, which is just downhill from the office.

We left Vanderhoof this morning under gray clouds and it stayed that way for the entire trip. We had occasional very light showers, but nothing significant. Leaving Vanderhoof, the Yellowhead Highway (BC-16) runs on the Frasier Plateau for about 100 miles. The highway rolls along on relatively flat terrain with a few hills. We passed numerous lakes along this portion of the route. The route then goes into mountainous terrain and ran through several river valleys. These valleys were very narrow with steep mountains running along both sides of the road. The mountains still have a significant snowpack on them and the meltwater cascaded down their side with some spectacular waterfalls. The nature of the road through these valleys was such that we had no place to pull over to take photographs. We pulled away from the rivers over over Rainbow Pass and headed down to Prince Rupert.

As always, Susie had her camera ready and looking to get some shots of wildlife. We saw plenty of signs warning of animal crossing the roads, but saw one solitary black bear who hightailed it into the woods before we could reach him. There are great distances between towns and it is really wild country. You have expectations of seeing animals at every turn. However, as we learned from our last trip to Alaska, the wilderness covers a lot of territory and the concentration of animals is such that it just a matter of luck whether you see them or not. The animals are there, just not where we were.

Tomorrow we go on a sea voyage.