Day 7: Finally! Wildlife!

I have always known the moose to be an illusive animal. I've lived in Montana and Minnesota. They live there too but you don't get to see them every day. However, from all you read and all people tell you they are EVERYWHERE in Canada and Alaska. Well, we have been on the road now since Monday and had NOT seen a moose anywhere. Up until today the big horn sheep in Jasper and an over fed black bird were all we had seen besides deer.

Today we took off from Fort Nelson, British Columbia to a sunny morning a little after 7 am. We soon hit fairly thick fog and all of a sudden there were animals everywhere. When driving on mountain roads in fog though it's hard to get good pictures. I did get these two of this huge bull moose. Unfortunately, everything else is so vast these pictures just don't do justice to how big he was! Finally!

I didn't give him a kiss but I was darn happy to see him. We also saw a young bull with a cow and another very large bull. Stopped at Toad Lodge to see the world famous hat collection. Supposedly they have over 6000 hats left by passersby on the Alcan Highway. The fog hung around for much of the morning and made for beautiful, "above the heavens" pictures when we would reach the summit of a peak.

We also stopped at the Sign Post Forest in Watson Lake. Not much of a town and we only found one restaurant but we had two menus to chose from...American Food or from scratch Chinese food. Dad went for the roast beast, I had chicken chow mein. The sign post forest was started years back by a homesick soldier while working on the highway. Now there are signs from all ends of the world. Amazing...wish I had had time to read a few more.

There were large herds of caribou and buffalo along the way as well. Tonight we have "landed" in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Definitely not all it was cracked up to be and the hotel is, well, uhm...let's just say it's a place to sleep and that's about it. We will be on the road early tomorrow for the last stretch into Fairbanks! Alaska or broke!!